PARTES RELACIONADAS

The flow of information to the top of the TAPS pyramid, resulting in a ‘valid and reliable summary’ of attainment (Davies et al. 2014), is reliant upon purposeful whole school

processes. The analysis begins at the top of the pyramid, the end of the process, in order to track back to the origins of the summative assessments and how they were related to formative assessment, since enactment of assessment processes is a key line of enquiry.

121 The top of the pyramid also contains a whole school focus and understanding of the

purpose of assessment, thus extracts coded with the term ‘purpose’ of assessment provided insights into the way science assessment was conceptualised and enacted at School A.

The science policy (Extract 5.1) stated that the way children are assessed: ‘enables them to make progress’ and lists a range of practices which involve discussion, classwork,

observation and tests:

Although collected in 2013, the policy had not been updated since 2010, explaining the mention of National Curriculum tests (SATs), which many schools chose to continue to use for a short time after they were abolished in 2009. It is not clear from this policy what information was used for summative teacher assessment and how: “some work is targeted for assessment purposes.” A formative use was suggested when describing how

assessments are used: “to plan for future development” and the first four points focus on children’s learning, but there is no explanation of what or how this information was used for the end of Key Stage ‘teacher assessment’. Thus the policy provides limited information about assessment processes at School A, with formative and summative purposes not clearly distinguished. It also cannot be assumed that the espoused practices listed in the policy are those that occur in action, however, it is useful to look at this historical document

EXTRACT 5.1

How we assess our children in a way that enables them to make progress

- We share the learning intention with the pupils.

- We assess our children by talking to them and asking questions, by looking at work and by observing the children carrying out practical tasks.

- We use our assessments to plan for further development. - Learner’s work is discussed with the child.

- Some work is targeted for assessment purposes.

- At the end of Key Stage children are assessed using teacher assessment. - At the end of Key Stage 2 children are assessed using NC tests.

122 to provide a context for future developments and note the status which had already been given to classroom discussion, an area which will be discussed in Section 5.5.1.

When discussing the purpose of assessment with the SL (Extract 5.2), it is the formative purpose which received the most attention:

Formative aims and strategies are described when asked about purpose, with no summative role mentioned; whilst summative strategies such as ‘paper testing’ are listed with more negative connotations, with concerns about validity raised by the SL: ‘limiting’, ‘not

accurate’. There appears to be both a separation of purposes and a representation akin to Harlen’s (2013) ‘good’ and ‘bad’ faces of assessment. ‘Rigid’ or box-filling assessments have been rejected, perhaps signifying a rejection of criteria compliance, where surface-level ticking of detailed objectives takes prominence, rather than in-depth learning (Mansell et al 2009). The primary focus on learning chimes with the literature on AfL, for example,

Gardner et al. (2010: 2) similarly assert that: “assessment of any kind should ultimately improve learning”. Consequential validity of formative assessment requires the information gathered to be used to support learning and this appears to be the espoused focus for assessment at School A.

In order to make conceptualisations about formative and summative assessment explicit, the SL was asked to write a definition for each on the first TAPS cluster day (Extract 5.3):

EXTRACT 5.2

The purpose of assessment in science

The purpose of assessment is to develop learning, to identify where children are, and to plan next steps. Assessment should involve children (AfL) and include some success criteria. It should also involve listening and questioning.

How the ethos of the school affects approaches to assessment

There is agreement that assessment should not be rigid or an exercise in filling in boxes. APP is not manageable. Paper testing is limiting and does not necessarily give an

accurate measure of attainment.

A high emphasis is put on speaking and listening and group work which is evident throughout the school.

123 The SL again placed more emphasis on formative assessment, for which a more detailed explanation was provided. Timing was a key part of the difference between the SL’s conceptualisations of assessment, with summative happening at the ‘end of year’, whilst formative ‘goes on all the time’. The allocation of summative assessment to the ‘end of the year’ is a common way to describe Assessment of Learning (Mawby and Dunne 2012), in contrast to Taras’s (2005) view of all assessment beginning with a summative judgement. This could also indicate that the SL was describing separate processes, with summative assessment seen as a separate or unusual activity, whilst formative assessment was more part of everyday practice, a process rather than an event (Swaffield 2011).

A key role of the teacher, in supporting children with their next steps, is described in formative assessment, but there is less sense of the role of the teacher in the definition of summative assessment. Summative assessment is described in two contrasting ways: a cumulative summation or a test. These are different conceptualisations of summative assessment. A summary of attainment utilises a range of information, supporting validity (Mansell et al. 2009) but the process for choice and collation of evidence to inform the summary is not explained. A test, as a ‘snapshot’ in time, could arguably provide less valid, but more reliable data (Halliday 2010), tipping the balance in the ‘trade off’ between validity and reliability in the opposite direction. This distinction between summative assessment as summary or snapshot will be explored further below in a discussion of ‘best fit’ (Section 5.3.1).

EXTRACT 5.3

Formative assessment: It is the assessment for learning which goes on all the time. The

stages that you are at and the steps you can take to improve next time. The teacher is key in this - they need to ask the right questions at the right time to move the child's learning forward. Therefore the teacher needs to have a clear understanding of the steps to take along the learning journey.

Summative assessment: This is the end of year overall assessment based on all the

assessments cumulatively or a test.

124 Any link between formative and summative is unclear, but this may have been a result of the way the task was set, asking for separate descriptions, which accentuated the split. The task also asked for definitions of the terms, which the SL gave in general terms, so it cannot be assumed that this extract describes practice in School A. The way formative assessment is described as important and valued is both a repeated and ongoing feature of the dataset, but its relationship with summative assessment is not clearly expressed. Analysis thus far has not revealed clear processes for formative assessment leading to or informing

summative assessment.