Making Space to Learn Through Informal Assessment for Learning Interactions

• In Event: 65.044 - Studying Informal Formative Assessment: Conceptual Advances and Methodological Approaches

Abstract

Objective

If the purpose of Assessment for Learning (AfL) is to enable learners to develop expertise in evaluating and regulating the quality of their learning, then it is important to understand how teachers create the spaces for students to develop this ownership of their learning in their daily interactions. This paper compares how two teachers created quite different interaction spaces for effective AfL practices, one teacher through highly choreographed AfL interactions and the other teacher through improvisation within AfL routines.

Theoretical Perspective

AfL practices are understood within a sociocultural perspective as “practices that develop patterns of participation, which subsequently contribute to students’ identities as learners and knowers” (Cowie, 2005, p. 210). Through a wide variety of cultural tools, social values and interactions, teachers guide students to become full participants in specific communities of practice (Rogoff, 1995, Wenger, 1998). Drawing on Cook and Brown’s (1999) theory of knowing in action as a generative dance between tacit and explicit, group and individual ways of knowing, AfL practices are seen as generative movements or routines in the dance of meaning.

Methods

In depth qualitative case studies were conducted with two teachers over one year in a regional school in Queensland, Australia. Data included researcher observations of 12 lessons in each class, analysis of video of classroom interactions, several in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with teachers, and separately with students. Data was analysed using a constant comparison, and emergent themes and the voices of participants were represented in thick description in narrative case studies (Simons, 2009).

Results

The two teachers enacted AfL interactions quite differently, Rachel through strict routine, and Greg through fluid negotiations. Both used AfL interactions to create spaces to increase learner autonomy. In both classrooms thinking aloud and partner work was routine, whether structured, or informal, during which students made informal judgments about how to improve their own work. Students reported that trust in their teachers, and in the shared routines of learning were essential before they could confidently improvise and take ownership of their learning.

Substantiated conclusions. In the dance between tacit and explicit knowledge, learners appropriate the discourses of the learning community, whether they participate at the edge of the dance floor or in the centre spotlight (Willis & Cowie, 2014). Informal AfL interactions established spaces for fluent participation, and learner improvisation. Both teachers invested significant emotional energy to create and continually maintain the social foundations that enabled informal AfL to achieve its purpose.

Scholarly Significance

This paper contributes to our understanding about critical issues within AfL: how teachers can enact the ‘spirit’ of AfL to achieve the goal of increasing student ownership of their learning (Marshall & Drummond, 2006). Understanding the various ways that teachers choreograph in-the-moment AfL interactions with students has significance for both teacher practitioners and AfL scholars. By visualizing ways that teachers can open up AfL spaces where students can be active participants and owners of the meaning making, we can capture the spirit of AfL.

Author

• Jill Willis, Queensland University of Technology