Optimizing Assessment for All: Caught in the middle: Bottom up - top down?

• In Event: Advocacy needs in implementation of 21st century skills in education systems

Proposal

The Optimizing Assessment for All (OAA) initiative is built as a model of co-capacity building. Unlike models in which there is a presumed expert who provides training in a particular field, the model adopted recognizes that co-construction by stakeholders is essential in situations which are new or relatively unexplored. OAA includes a core team comprising researchers with educational assessment and developmental psychology backgrounds, country technical teams comprised mainly of assessment staff from their national education systems, and teachers who provide "reality checks" as well as piloting draft tasks in their classrooms.

The assessment of 21st century skills in mainstream education is in its infancy. Despite some impressive high-tech initiatives that have provided proof of concept approaches to capturing these dynamic capabilities, little serious program work has been undertaken to explore classroom approaches which might have the flexibility for eventual scaling up. OAA takes the view that this infancy provides countries with an opportunity to break new ground themselves rather than drawing on international experts who in this particular assessment domain are themselves also in their infancy. In addition, that so many countries are seeking resources and expertise in the field of 21st century skills provides an excellent space for their collaboration. Accordingly, the OAA initiative is built on a collaborative model which draws on assessment and psychometric expertise, but sees the users of the eventual assessments as essential to their construction. Equally, the model devolves responsibility to country teams for development of the assessment frameworks and blueprints. The initiative is implemented through intensive workshops hosted by each country, interspersed with virtual meetings and development work. The workshops include the National Technical Teams from each of the three countries as well as teachers from the host country. Apart from the teacher contributions to task concept drafts and panelling of items, their participation ensures reality checks concerning usability of the draft assessment tasks.

What would we have done differently in implementing this initiative? We would have been more explicit about the co-capacity building model. Since, as mentioned above, most regional or international assessment programs are top-down, the mode of working together should have been made more clear to the participating countries. This would have diminished presumptions that reporting templates might be provided, or that more fulsome construct descriptions would have been built by the core team rather than by what is increasingly referred to as the OAA International Team - including Brookings and technical partner researchers and the national technical teams. Apart from building of usable assessment tasks that target the 21st century skills, a super-ordinate goal of the initiative is to ensure a critical mass of assessment experts from participating countries who can extend beyond this initiative to include a wider set of skills, across more grade levels; and who can contribute within their regional networks to support neighbouring countries. From the initial work within the regional networks which raised awareness of issues in assessment of 21st century skills, to development of capacity by the national technical teams, these latter will be in a position to contribute back to the regional networks as a major resource.

Author

• Esther Care, The Brookings Institution