Assessment for Learning? Learning to Learn?
I have been involved in a long-running debate around assessment for learning (rather than assessment of learning). Indeed, I believe I have a good understanding of the concept thanks to my colleague Jerry Owens from the secondary transformation team, who is passionate about the subject and has taken the time to explain why it is pivotal in transformation and the personalisation of learning.
At Jerry's suggestion I recently visited Cramlington Community High School (CCHS) in Newcastle, a school that is managing a transition from traditional teaching to learner centricity and the lessons they are learning in the process.
I am sceptical when ICT claims to have brought about a revolutionary change of practice across a school. Its rarely as simple as some killer application or piece of kit, and such claims rarely stack up under scrutiny. Successful change is frequently anecdotal and can be driven by sponsored evangelism (and accompanying funding); OFSTED recovery; charismatic educators. What is particularly interesting is that this 'technology focussed' school didn't end up focussing on technology, rather they demonstrated a radical re-engineering of teaching and learning with technology applied to realise the vision.
There was interesting discussion around the online applications that have been developed to support the school, (indeed how these have been further developed into products that schools can purchase). In my opinion though neither software nor hardware can bring about change on their own. It is vision and commitment by the school that has evolved the approach, shaken it down and made it work. I came away with the feeling that setting aside valuable timetable space to teach children how to learn is an worthy investment that for Cramlington paid off in a very real way (a direct correlation between cohort and results), and perhaps rather than a proposals for shortening KS3 the time would be better spent developing this art of learning. The 'Learning to Learn' tools were impressive, but more impressive still was the use they were put to by the children. I truly envy the learning skills they are developing. Even more interesting is the 20% saving in teacher contact time realised by older students because they work autonomously. I saw the approach at the BETT show and was impressed at the accelerated learning concepts but not their software offering. Alite have now teamed up with RealSmart the assessment for learning developers, and the combi product set is now very impressive and captures the successful concepts deployed at Cramlington. This is worth a look for schools prepared to think outside of traditional teaching and learning. Prepare to be challenged.