Education and Professional Studies - Essay Example

Education and Professional Studies – Inclusion Education systems in the new millennium are placing greater emphasis on the redefinition of not only professional education at every level but particularly the school curriculum for primary-aged children. As the curriculum is redefined to reflect and to foster change in the wider social and economic context in which primary schools exist, teachers are faced with the responsibility of planning the total learning environment, and suggest ways to assess children’s learning within it. For example, in England and Wales there has been public debate about appropriate uses of summative assessment; and questions rose about the extent to which publication of raw assessment outcomes tell us anything about the quality of a school. The debate includes attempts to define what makes a school ‘effective’ enough to implement quality education standards, and has raised questions both within and without the teaching profession of how to define quality. (Anna, 1996, p. 1) Assessment arrangements constitute a formal part of the National Curriculum. Statutory assessment and testing take place in relation to the National Curriculum Subject Orders, and therefore aim to chart students’ attainment in those subjects. Although the tests, as opposed to teacher assessment, can cover only a limited range within each subject, they do still set out to provide a valid assessment of that range. They are therefore curriculum-based tests. This makes them different in character from either intelligence tests or aptitude tests. They set out to assess children’s achievement, rather than their potential. (SCAA, 1996a) Everyday teacher assessment is formative and diagnostic, carried out as a normal function of teaching and learning; end of key stage National Curriculum teacher assessment is summative. (SCAA, 1996b) The valid assessment of pupils and their progress requires certain techniques to be invented right from the grass root level. Improvement in measuring standards and progress in reading will be fostered if an understanding of both child development and the theory and practice of various assessment techniques are used in concert to develop an appropriate form of assessment. In addition, distinctions need to be made between formative and summative uses of test information with both individuals and groups. Tests must be chosen carefully, for fitness for purpose to provide specific information about particular aspects of a child’s development with respect to reading and writing skills. There is a wide variety of reading tests in existence including normative tests, domain-referenced tests, tests based on item response theory, informal reading inventories and a range of unobtrusive measures. These have been developed over the years to suit the assessment purposes needed at different times of a child’s reading development. The theoretical bases and applications of these various approaches to assessment and their respective strengths and weaknesses need explicating to both the public and the teaching profession. (Richard, 1998, p. 167). A way to lower the stakes of national testing would be to abandon full-scale testing of all children in the assessment of national standards and progress in reading and to replace it by the monitoring of standards of a representative sample of the school population. Monitoring implies attempting to determine changes over time in attainment. Ideally, this involves giving the same test to equivalent samples of children of the same age at regular intervals. The performance evidence generated would not result in league tables but would provide a consistent measure to keep the nation informed about standards and progress in the key basis skill of reading. Attempts were made to do this by the Assessment of Performance Unit (APU) but abandoned in favour of nationwide testing. (Richard, 1998, p. 167). The arguments against the APU approach were both technical and political. The technical sophistication demanded certain needs to take into account the issues raised earlier, any of which might invalidate the collection of the data. The political perspective, on the other hand, was that teachers should be held responsible for the standards and progress of the children they taught and that this would be achieved through publication of national test results at the level of the child and school. The desire for improvements in literacy needs no argument but what to do about it does. The school, its classrooms and pupils represent crucibles in which both theory and practice can be tested, refined and evaluated in the light of developing new strategies for education. What is needed in the early years of the next century is a more critical and skeptical view of changes introduced into primary schools in pursuit of higher standards. These should be based on a rigorous pilot testing period. Attainment in education is influenced by environmental factors within the home, such as the composition of families, their occupational and financial status, and their ethnic origins. These influences act on each individual and interact within families. No single factor is all-important. What matters is the cumulative advantage or disadvantage accrued from the interplay of several factors, which affect children’s school attainments. (Richard, 1998, p. 167-68) Theory and Practice in Primary Education In classrooms, pupils and teachers have modified one another’s behaviour for generations. The term ‘behaviour modification’ is, however, a relatively new one, which refers to a range of techniques in which applications of the psychology of learning are used in a planned and careful way to change the behaviour of oneself or others. The classroom has been one of the more fruitful environments for this kind of activity. There are many different theories of learning, each with its own associated body of knowledge and research. However, practically all classroom applications have been based on B.F. Skinner’s notion of instrumental or operant conditioning. (Siegel, 1953, p. 12) Now, however, there is a considerable body of research demonstrating, not only its efficacy in influencing children to attend to the teacher, get on with work, remain in their seats, attend school more regularly, and interact socially; but also that it is helpful to reinforce children for not doing something. (Rosenberg, 1975, p. 8) Learning Assessment in Primary Education Assessment is an extremely topical and important issue in education at the present time and it is one that is the subject of international debate. In the United Kingdom, changes in assessment practice have affected all stages of education. James (Whitebread, 1999, p. 24), for example, suggests that from early years education through to adult education the purposes, content, form and methods of assessment are the subject of reflection, analysis and modification. James lists the following examples to illustrate the range of the current assessment debate as it currently affects all levels of the education service: The assessment of young children entering school, including ‘baseline’ assessment; The introduction of National Curriculum assessment and testing for school pupils from 5 to 14 in England and Wales and comparable arrangements in Scotland and Northern Ireland; The assessment of modular courses in further and higher education and the accreditation of prior learning (APL) and prior experiential learning (APEL); Work-based assessment and performance appraisal. The baseline assessment scheme is replaced by a new national scheme for summing up the progress and learning needs of children at the end of the foundation stage i.e, aged around 5. (INCA, 2006a) this scheme known as the foundation stage profile (QCA, 2002) is a means of summing up each child’s progress and learning needs at the end of the foundation stage. Practitioners assess each child’s development in relation to the statutory ‘early learning goals’ by accumulating observations and knowledge of the whole child. National Curriculum assessment is statutory in Year 2 after the foundation stage (the final year of key stage 1) and towards the end of key stage 2 (Year 6), children aged around 7 and 11 years respectively. In addition, there is voluntary National Curriculum assessment for children in Years 3, 4 and 5, aged 8, 9 and 10 years respectively. (Eurydice, 2004a) ‘World class tests’ are available for the most able children in primary education. The tests, which measure performance in mathematics and problem solving (in mathematics, science and design technology) are part paper-based, part computer-based. Although broadly targeted at 9-year-olds (there are additional world class tests for 13-year-olds in secondary level education), children can take the tests as soon as they are judged ready. They last 60 minutes each, and each requires students to apply creative thinking and logic, by demonstrating their ability to process and respond to unfamiliar information and communicate their thought processes coherently. The problem solving tests require some mathematical, scientific or technological knowledge. However, the emphasis is on a student’s ability to solve a problem that they will not have studied at school. It is about drawing on a student’s knowledge and coupling that with individual thinking. In the mathematics tests, students apply what they have learned to new situations and use their thinking skills to solve unfamiliar problems. World class tests are part of a broader government initiative ‘Excellence in Cities’, which is aimed at improving the achievements of children with an initial focus on key city areas. (Eurydice, 2004b) While such tests may superficially appear to meet the perceived need for objective information about children’s levels of achievement, they will in practice still embody an enormous amount of variation in the context for performance and will in addition have very limited utility. Indeed, they are likely to be quite counterproductive in terms of at least two of the four purposes of national assessment, the diagnostic and the formative. While written tests would appear to offer relative ease of administration and greater comparability between schools, they are also likely to produce extremely limited information. They may also result in teaching to the test and constrain the National Curriculum in ways, which would be unacceptable. The original blueprint for national assessment, which was set out in the TGAT (1988) Report, identified four different purposes for national assessment: Diagnostic assessment to identify individual pupils’ strengths and weaknesses; Formative assessment to give feedback and encouragement; Summative assessment to report on a given pupil’s attainment at a given stage of schooling; and Evaluative assessment to provide aggregated information about the overall level of pupil achievement in any particular school, as a basis for comparing one school with another. The context of primary education in England and Wales in which the ideology of child-centered education is still central, it is not possible to devise any assessment task or test to be implemented by teachers, which will not be subject to very considerable contextual effects. One might wish to go further and argue that any attempt to test 7-years-old on a systematic basis is bound to be heavily overlaid in its results by contextual effects, including who does the teaching, in what circumstances, and what is the personal affective state of the child concerned. (Anna, 1996, p. 53-54) What makes Formative assessment work? High order questioning techniques Thinking skills Problem solving techniques The use of wrong answers Discussions Peer assessment Feedback comments rather than grades Sharing assessment criteria Developing communication skills Inclusion in Teaching (TESS, 2004) Assessment Purposes The classic list of assessment purposes comes from Macintosh and Hale (1976), who identified six main purposes for assessment; Diagnosis: finding out what precisely a student or group of students has learned with a view to planning curriculum and teaching to meet their needs; Evaluation: using assessment information as evidence in judging the value of educational provision; Guidance: helping students to make appropriate career or course choices; Grading: identifying the level at which a student is performing and assigning a number or letter to signify the standard attained; Selection: identifying those students most suitable for a particular class, school or form of employment; Prediction: identifying the potential or aptitude of individuals for a particular kind of training or employment in order to avoid the waste of talent. Assessment of National Curriculum Subjects The National Curriculum is a statement of educational entitlement to which no child should be denied. To withdraw a child’s entitlement by disapplying the National Curriculum requires strong justification. The Code of Practice on special educational needs (DFE 1994) reiterates the inclusivity of the National Curriculum: ‘Children with special educational needs require the greatest possible degree of access to a broad and balanced curriculum including the National Curriculum’ The National Curriculum advice on planning in the primary school (1989) described the curriculum in three ways: The curriculum as planned, The curriculum as taught and The curriculum as received. Reflection on each of these reminds us that if we are not clear about children’s current understandings and the sense that they have made of their learning, any new learning experience can fall on deaf ears or be totally misunderstood. In this context, it is important not to assume that what a child currently knows is based upon what we most recently taught them. A great deal of learning goes on outside school and children bring well established understandings to their learning in school. There is also a lot of evidence that some of these understandings are wrong. Since the teacher is closest to this understanding, he or she is in a good position to gather the necessary information to plan the next stages in learning so that more effective learning takes place, learning that builds on and extends the learner’s current understanding and competence. (Conner, 1999, p. 18) The School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA) issued advice (June 1995) which focuses on the need to secure common interpretations of standards across a school. James (1996) suggests opportunities for teachers to discuss children’s learning using both tangible and ephemeral evidence. The purpose of such activities will be to agree and check standards with each other and with reference to external materials provided by the Qualifications and Curriculum Agency (QCA). It will also provide opportunities to discuss and share strategies for teaching and learning and to engage in joint curriculum planning to promote continuity and progression. This will create opportunities to build assessment into the planning process. (Conner, 1999, p. 27) Planning Coverage of National Curriculum One way of utilising children’s motivation for learning and of building on this is to encourage children to develop their own interests through topic- or project-based learning. The extent to which a topic approach to developing learning is motivating for children may depend on how the topic is chosen. Ways of introducing topics range from wholly child-centred to more strongly teacher-initiated. At the child-centred end are situations in which learning develops naturally from a child’s firsthand experiences. This approach requires much careful teacher guidance of children and direct teaching when the need for this is apparent. Its great strength is that it starts with the child’s interests but difficulty arises in ensuring progression, balance and breadth in learning. A second approach to planning coverage of the National Curriculum is to start with the cross-curricular elements, rather than subject-based documentation, and to plan the curriculum around the cross-curricular elements. This has intuitive appeal for many primary school teachers. In this approach a school might begin by listing cross-curricular dimensions, leading to a policy statement of school principles in relation to issues such as equal opportunities. Then the school might look at cross-curricular themes (not only the National Curriculum Council’s ‘pre-eminent’ five) and map how these will be taught across and within classes. Next, cross-curricular skills are reviewed to check that these are being developed with continuity and progression. These three sets of cross-curricular elements lead to reference to subject documentation. Thus, at the planning stage, the processes of learning and, in particular, the developments of personal and social skills come before subject-centred knowledge. This approach has been used successfully in some special schools, for example, those for children with severe learning difficulties. For these pupils subject-centred learning has involved only the first few levels of relevant attainment targets. It is more difficult to translate the approach into contexts in which children will be acquiring a wide range of subject-specific knowledge, concepts and skills. A third way of planning for curricular breadth is to take an alternative framework from that of the National Curriculum. The appeal of this approach is that it retains an overall breadth as well as approaching subject-based work from a wide disciplinary base. According to Paul Hirst (1974), “the validity of these areas has been debated but they have much in common with theoretical models such as the forms of knowledge”. (Paul Hirst, 1974, p. 121) References Anna Craft, 1996, “Primary Education: Assessing and Planning Learning”: Routledge. London and New York in association with The Open University. Conner Colin, 1999, “Assessment in Action in the Primary School”: Falmer: London. Dadds Marion & Lofthouse Brenda, 1990. “The Study of Primary Education: A Source Book. Compiled by Colin Conner with Brenda Lofthouse”. Volume: 1: Falmer Press. Place of Publication: London. DFE (1994) Code of Practice on the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs, London: DFE. Eurydice, (2004a), EURYDICE AT THE NFER. The Education System in the United Kingdom (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) - 2002/03. [Online] via the EURYBASE database at http://www.eurydice.org/ Eurydice, (2004b), EURYDICE AT THE NFER. The Education System in the United Kingdom (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) - 2002/03. [Online] via the EURYBASE database at http://www.eurydice.org/ Hirst, P. (1974) Knowledge and the Curriculum, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul INCA, (2006a) Available from < http://www.inca.org.uk/1312.html > JAMES, M. (1996) The Assessment of Learning, Unit 5, Open University Course E208, Exploring Educational Issues, Open University Press. Lewis Ann, 1995. “Primary Special Needs and the National Curriculum”: Routledge. London and New York. MACINTOSH, H.G. and HALE, D.E. (1976) Assessment and the Secondary School Teacher, London: RKP. QUALIFICATIONS AND CURRICULUM AUTHORITY (QCA) (2002). Investing in our Future: the Foundation Stage Profile. London: QCA. Richard Colin & Taylor H. Philip, 1998. “How Shall We School Our Children? Primary Education and Its Future”: Falmer Press: London. ROSENBERG, H., 1975 “Children as psychologists” in “Special Education Forward Trends”, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 8-9. SCAA, 1996a, SCHOOL CURRICULUM AND ASSESSMENT AUTHORITY (SCAA) Review of Assessment and Testing: Report from the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. Hayes: SCAA. SCAA, 1996b, SCHOOL CURRICULUM AND ASSESSMENT AUTHORITY (SCAA) Review of Assessment and Testing: Report from the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. Hayes: SCAA. SCHOOLS CURRICULUM ASSESSMENT AUTHORITY (SCAA) (1995) Consistency in Teacher Assessment. Guidance for Schools, London: SCAA. SIEGEL, P.S. and FOSHEE, J.G., 1953. “The law of primary reinforcement in children” in “Journal of Experimental Psychology”, Vol. 45, No. 1, p. 12-14. TESS, 30 January 2004, Available from < http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Database/assessment.html > Whitebread, D., 1999. “The Psychology of Teaching and Learning in Primary School”, London: Routledge. Read More