from CEM Learning Directions
It’s like the old saying: You never realise what you’ve got until it’s gone.
With our regular face-to-face teaching being taken away in the COVID-19 remote learning environment, we have rediscovered the importance of teachers and teaching perhaps like never before.
Families and students agree, with both groups responding overwhelmingly through the recent optional remote learning surveys, (a sample of 100 schools and over 102,000 item responses) that teachers do an amazing job, and whether they do it remotely or not, teachers hold the key to student learning.
The preliminary data from the surveys demonstrate what students, parents and teachers miss the most through remote learning are the learning interactions between students and teachers. In acknowledging the demands placed on teachers working remotely (many of whom are looking after their own children as well) students and their families are craving more student–teacher time, more one-on-one feedback, and more chances to ask questions and clarify understandings with their teacher.
This recognition of the importance of teachers’ work is stating the obvious to many, but perhaps remote learning highlights to some, for the first time, the sophisticated professional role that the teacher plays in knowing their students, identifying what they need, and making professional decisions about supporting students to flourish.
Advancing teacher evidence
One aspect of teaching which has been thrust into the spotlight due to the COVID-19 pandemic is how teachers use evidence and assess students. Without the National Assessment Program –Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and other standardised assessments, as well as the absence of Catholic Education Melbourne School Improvement Surveys (CEMSIS), many in education have been asking the question: how do we assess students and what evidence do we use?
Through this uncertainty about data there have been calls from some in education to bring back old versions of NAPLAN tests, to rush in alternative NAPLAN tests, or to enable sampled online NAPLAN tests. This anxiety about data and assessments makes me wonder if we have forgotten what teachers are trained to know and be able to do.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken away many of the assessment staples that schools and teachers were used to and relied upon to assess student performance. And in the sometimes chaotic throes of remote learning, who could blame educators for wondering: how do I assess my students in a valid and reliable way?
Notwithstanding all the horrible impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the long-term potential positives on education is that it provides the opportunity to surface, acknowledge and use the knowledge and skills that teachers have in making judgments about student learning.
The remote learning situation has put the teacher back in the driver’s seat in terms of owning the knowledge they have about students and their learning – and using this expertise to generate, collect and analyse data that is valid and formative in the new environment.
For many years the place of this teacher evidence has been contested. Some hold that teacher judgements are not valid, are unscientific and subjective, and do not classify as ‘real’ evidence. And in many ways they are right – that is, unless teachers’ evidence is assessed critically in terms of four key lenses for teacher evidence.
Many educationalists, such as Dylan Wiliam (2019), Gert Biesta (2007) and Stephen Brookfield (2017) amongst others, state that teacher evidence can be every bit as valuable and valid as other so-called ‘scientific evidence’ if teachers are supported to build a critically reflective approach to teaching using the following methods.
The four critical lenses for teacher evidence (Brookfield 2017)
- Evidence from students
A teacher’s knowledge of their students – their talents, their challenges, their personalities and their knowledge-bases in different areas, is critical evidence for teachers. Indeed, within the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) Teacher Standards the first standard for teachers is ‘Knowing students and how they learn’.
Knowing these aspects of individual students and their learning enables teachers to more precisely decide on the most appropriate challenge task for that student, and enables teachers to be better placed to choose the most effective assessment tasks for each student.
This is particularly important in a remote learning environment with potentially less student–teacher interaction, where a teacher can draw upon their knowledge of a student to employ the most appropriate strategies to progress the student’s learning. For example, if a teacher has built up a rigorous learning profile of their students, they may know that Jade is high in conscientiousness and industriousness and will thrive with independent tasks, but that Carl conversely needs clear scaffolding put in place around the task itself so that he can understand what is expected and has a supported pathway to follow. The teacher also knows that Sally is high in the extroverted domain and needs a lot of personal interaction and discussion to maximise her learning.
Knowing the students in front of you is one of the best forms of teacher evidence you can access. This type of evidence about students adds validity to research literature by contextualising the academic research to the particular students in front of the teacher.
2. Evidence from colleagues
Erkens (2016), amongst others, argue that teachers’ use of evidence is more valid when used collaboratively. Erkens has shown that when teachers work together on collaborative common assessment tasks then the validity and reliability of teacher judgments improve. Teachers moderating evidence collaboratively is intended to help teachers study their impact and, ultimately, refine their decisions.
Common assessments are defined as any assessment given by two or more teachers with the intention of collaboratively examining the results for shared learning, instructional planning for individual students, increased accuracy in assessment design, alignment to standards, and clear, uniform targets.
When teachers look closely at their classroom results in a comparative way, it is easier to identify strengths and stretch points, and then engage in the collaborative problem-solving required to help students close achievement gaps. Conversations generated from the collaborative use of evidence amongst teachers create profound and meaningful professional learning opportunities.
Such collaborative teamwork using evidence in the classroom highlights the importance of collaborative structures within a school such as professional learning communities or communities of practice which can enable the sharing of evidence between teachers.
3. Evidence from research literature
Brookfield (2017) argues that evidence from teaching theory and research provides the vocabulary for teaching practice and offers teachers verified ways to view and understand their teaching. Researchers like Wisniewski, Zierer & Hattie (2020) have contributed to much of the current discourse on evidence-based approaches to education, and initiatives like the Evidence for Learning project and the What Works Clearing Houses provide teachers with accessible ways into what the research literature says about effective teaching and learning.
While the research literature may not always be relevant for one’s own particular context, evidence from peer-reviewed research provides teachers with their ‘best bet’ for what might work with students, and this research evidence when used in conjunction with evidence from students, evidence from colleagues, and evidence from personal experience can form a robust circle of evidence from which to make accurate decisions.
4. Evidence from experience
Brookfield (1998) also argues that our autobiography as a learner represents one of the most important sources of insight into practice to which we have access. Yet, he argues, in much professional education research, personal experience is dismissed and demeaned as ‘merely anecdotal’– in other words, as hopelessly subjective and impressionistic.
It is true, of course, that at one level all experience is inherently subjective. However, when personal experience is reflected upon critically, in conjunction with the other three forms of evidence, it forms a tighter junction of evidence and a more valid approach to teacher decision-making.
Surfacing teachers’ personal knowledge and experience is critical because teacher knowledge is by its very nature practical, personal, situated (Clandinin 1986, Elbaz 1983) and embodied within teachers’ actions (Schön 1983).
This highlights the need for ways to support teachers to reflect on their practice in terms of the ways that their past experiences shape the decisions that they make in the classroom. In this way the valuable evidence which comes unconsciously from a teacher’s past experiences forms a more valid and reliable form of evidence to inform their teaching.
Expert teaching in the remote learning environment
The remote learning environment has thrust teachers and their professional judgements back in the driver’s seat for making improvements in education. This is arguably a great thing for students and their learning, as it places the location of professional knowledge and decision-making back inside the classroom with teachers, and within the contexts in which teachers are teaching.
The caveat spelled out here is that teacher evidence is most valid when using the four critical lenses on evidence (evidence from students, from colleagues, from research and from teachers’ own experiences). It is this amalgam of ‘teacher evidence’ that expert teachers possess, and it is this type of evidence that we should invest in to support the teacher-led renewal in learning outcomes.
References
Biesta, G 2007, ‘Why “what works” won’t work: Evidence‐based practice and the democratic deficit in educational research’ Educational Theory, 57 (1), 122.
Brookfield, S 2017, Becoming a critically reflective teacher, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Brookfield, S 1998, ‘Critically Reflective Practice’, The Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 18, 197–205, Society for Academic Continuing Medical Education, USA.
Clandinin, DJ 1986, Classroom practice: teacher images in action, Falmer Press, London.
Elbaz, F 1983, Teacher thinking: A study of practical knowledge, Nichols Publishing, New York.
Erkens, C 2016, Collaborative Common Assessments, Solution Tree Press, Canada.
Schön, DA 1983, The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action, Basic Books, New York.
Wisniewski, B, Zierer, K & Hattie, J 2020, ‘The Power of Feedback Revisited: A Meta-Analysis of Educational Feedback Research’, Frontiers in Psychology, 22 January 2020.
Wiliam, D 2019, ‘Teaching not a research-based profession’, Tes, 30 May 2019, accessed 17 August 2020 www.tes.com/news/dylan-wiliam-teaching-not-research-based-profession.
Dr Simon Lindsay can be contacted on 9267 0228 or slindsay@macs.vic.edu.au
Teaching Wisdom 