1c.+Maybe+add+in+later

Sort of got this other idea for sigfnificance but not fully developed, maybe add later, notes below:

concept of learning vs doing well in assessments

Need to examine isf disconnect between learning outcomes, assessment and therefore skill
 * ASSESSMENT **

- Change in thinking, if we teach it well enough in a meaningful and authentic way then students will learn. Focus has been on this side of things in a big way, making the school experience meaningful both in formal and informal settings. But reality of exams is that there is still rote learning/memorization needed and students still have tp get themselves oragnised and learn to work effectively and manage their time at home. The self-regulation strategies have not received the focus. - Lots of research on the ideal way for students to learn in school ie an ideal learning environment, but much of this research does not look at the constraints imposed on the system ie the assessment system. When these constraints are taken into account, are we meeting the needs of our students? Biggs 1999 – the generic aim of good teaching is to encourage students to adopt a deep approach and discourage the use of a surface approach(Biggs 1999), it is essential for assessment to be constructively aligned to promote a deep approach (Biggs 2001) But we know students will adopt the approach that suits the task BIGGS: In constructive alignment, we start with the outcomes we intend students to learn, and align teaching and assessment to those outcomes. The outcome statements contain a learning activity, a verb, that students need to perform to best achieve the outcome, such as "//apply //expectancy-value theory of motivation", //or "explain //the concept of … ". That verb says what the relevant learning activities are that the students need to undertake in order to attain the intended learning outcome. Learning is constructed by what activities the students carry out; learning is about what they do, not about what we teachers do. Likewise, assessment is about how well they achieve the intended outcomes, not about how well they report back to us what we have told them. The [|SOLO Taxonomy] helps to map levels of understanding that can be built into the intended learning outcomes and to create the assessment criteria or rubrics. Constructive alignment can be used for individual courses, for degree programmes, and at the institutional level, for aligning all teaching to graduate attributes. Constructive alignment is an example of outcomes-based education (OBE). Unfortunately, some versions of OBE have attracted criticism; it has been used in some secondary school systems in a post-modern mishmash of outcomes, and in the US particularly, across institutions to serve a managerial agenda. My version of OBE, constructive alignment, is concerned //only //with improving teaching and learning and as such has been successfully implemented in universities all over the world. Google [|“constructive alignment”] and you will currently see over 26,000 references, none of which have anything to do with left wing propaganda or with managerialism. Lack of constructive alignment between the outcomes we intend to teach and the assessment that is opposed upon teachers has meant a dissonance in the Gijbels et al (2005) examine the relationship between students’ approaches to learning and learning outcomes through a review of the literature and previous studies in this area. They conclude that although the results seem inconsistent generally a deep surface approach is associated with higher quality learning outcomes. The justification given for the inconsistency of the results is based on the work of Biggs (1987), Marton and Saljo (1976) and Entwistle, McCune and Hounsell (2003) and is linked to assessment and the failure of the system to necessarily reward the deep approach. Duff et al (2004) found that while both deep and strategic approaches were positively correlated with academic performance, consistent with earlier research (Entwistle 1988) surface approach was negatively correlated with academic performance. This research has had profound impact on policy makers. Eg of documenrs. However, this is based in university setting with university assessments – given that the nature of school based assessments has not been compated with university based assessments we have to consider the validity of this argument. This is not to say that surface approach should be favoured over a deep processing or strategic approach, but that it cannot be discounted as having a role to play in the secondary school system. Or have we mistakenly assumed that there are no need for memorisation techniques in deep learning? Gijbels etc al (2005) citing Minbashian et al (2004) propose that the way students study is greatly influenced by the method of assessment. Education and learning are embedded in the instituoon iof the school and assessment Jonassen et al (2008) in an American context “Federal legislation has mandated continous testing of K-12 students in order to make school and students more accountable for their learning “ p2 “Because the purpose of theose tests and the preparation supporting them is to attain a passing score, the students are seldom invested in the process, so they make no attempt to understand the knowledge being tested. The students do not ask to take the tests. The tests assess skills and knowledge that are detacghed from their everyday experience, so they have little meaning. The testing process is individual, so students are enjoined from cooperating with others. The tests represent only a single form of knowledge representation, so students are not able to develop conceptual understanding, which requires representing what you know in multiple ways. Simply stated, learning to take test does not result in meaningful learning.” Thinks American schools are testing factories. Refer to article again for this one

When held against Romeo’s (2004) picture of assessment in an ideal school being ‘mostly summative, generative and authentic’ p12, our assessment system may not measure up.