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Once you know what theyvelearned, what do you do next?

Designing curriculum and

assessment for growth

Dylan Wiliam

Institute of Education, University of Londonwww.dylanwiliam.net

Presentation to MDSE/MARCES conference;

University of Maryland, College Park, MD; October 2006


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Outline

Education reform in England and Wales

Designing an assessment system to

support learning

Age-independent levels of achievement

Distribution of achievement over time

Applications to curriculum specification


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A familiar story

Education Reform Act (1988)

An early attempt to use markets to reform

education Choice

Diversity

Standardization

Information


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Key features of ERA

Basic curriculum: Religious education (!)

Core subjects (English, Math, Science)

Non-core subjects (7 in all)

Four key stages (5-7, 7-11, 11-14, 14-16)

Core subjects assessed at end of each key stage

Other subjects assessed at some key stages


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Task Group on Assessment

and Testing (TGAT)To advise the Secretary of State on the practical considerations which should

govern all assessment including testing of attainment at age (approximately) 7, 11,

14 and 16, within a national curriculum; including

the marking scale or scales and kinds of assessment including testing to be used,the need to differentiate so that assessment can promote learning across a range

of abilities,

the relative roles of informative and of diagnostic assessment,

the uses to which the results of assessment should be put,

the moderation requirements needed to secure credibility for assessments, and

the publication and other services needed to support the systemwith a view to securing assessment and testing arrangements which are simple to

administer, understandable by all in and outside the education service, cost-

effective, and supportive of learning in schools.


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Task Group on Assessment

and Testing (TGAT)

Basic choice Age-dependent

benchmark assessments at each age-point

Age-independent

linked system of achievement levels across ages

Crucial factors Technical feasibility

Impact on students


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Age-dependent levels

Simple to understand

Familiar

Significant negative impact on student

motivation

Encourages a notion of ability as fixed

rather than incremental


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Age-independent levels

In psychology

Piaget (Shayer et al., 1976; Shayer & Wylam, 1978)

Pascual-Leone

Case

SOLO (Biggs & Collis, 1982)

Van Hiele

CSMS (Hart, 1981)

In Education (or math education at least!) The Dalton Plan (Parkhurst, 1922)

Kent Mathematics Project (Banks, 1991)

Secondary Mathematics Individualised Learning Experiment

Graded Assessment in Mathematics (Brown, 1992)


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Preliminary evidence

6099 + 1 = ? (Foxman et al., 1980)

Correctly answered by some 7-year-olds

Incorrectly answered by some 14-year-olds The seven year gap (Cockcroft, 1981)

Progression in measuring (Simon et al.,

1995)

Spread of achievement in an age cohort

apparently much greater than generally

assumed


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CSMS (Hart, 1981)

Achievement in Decimals by age

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1 2 3 4 5 6

Level achieved

Age 12

Age 13

Age 14

Age 14


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Sequential tests of educational

progress (ETS, 1957)Annual growth in school attainment (STEP)

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Grade

Reading

Writing

Listening

Soc. Stud.

Science

Math


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Sensitivity to instruction

1 year

Distribution of attainment on an item

highly sensitive to instruction


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Sensitivity to instruction (2)

1 year


moderately sensitive to instruction


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Sensitivity to instruction (3)

1 year


relatively insensitive to instruction


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Insensitivity to instruction

Artifact or reality?

Influenced by test construction procedures

Influenced by approaches to curriculum

Dimensions of progression

Reasoning power

Curriculum exposure Maturity


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Nature of hierarchies

Hierarchies are partly arbitrary

Division can precede multiplication

Integration can precede differentiation

Hierarchies are partly psychological

Some learning sequences appear inevitable

Writing

Number skills


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Proportion

ofa

ge

cohort

Graded Assessment in Mathematics

Intended for all school

students, aged 11 to 16 Design requirement: all

students should be able

to increase by one level

per year Upper levels designed to

be equivalent to existing

national examinations


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ITBS language usage test

Grade equivalent

Percentile


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A very simple model

Achievement age is normally distributed

about chronological age, with a

standard deviation proportional to thechronological age

Constant of proportionality varies from

around one-sixth to one-half, dependingon the kind of curriculum and

assessment


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Standardized tests

BB

B

B B B

J

J

J

J

J

J

HH

H

H H H

F

F

F

F

MM M M

MM

7

77 7

77

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Age (years)

B CAT:Q

J CAT:NV

H CAT:V

F TGAT

NFER DH

CSMS(M)

WSRT

T1L1

M T1L2

T2L1

T2L2

7 T9L1

T9L2


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The TGAT model

Stage Ages Levels

1 5-7 1-3

2 7-11 2-6

3 11-14 3-8

4 14-16 4-10


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Curriculum development

Curriculum developers forced to focus on What develops? Models of curriculum

Grade-based models (France, Germany)

Social promotion (England, Japan, Sweden)

Hybrid models (USA)

Models of differentiation Same goals, same curriculum, different speeds

Same goals, different curriculum

Different goals

Models of progression

Good in math, design technology OK in language arts, science

Poor in history

Dimensions of progression

Mathematics: reasoning power

Science: curriculum exposure

English: maturity


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Hierarchies in science

1. Know that light comes from different sources

2. Know that light passes through some materials and not others, and that when itdoes not, shadows may be formed

3. Know that light can be made to change direction, and that shiny surfaces can

form images4. Know that light travels in straight lines, and this can be used to explain the

formation of shadows

5. Understand how light is reflected

6. Understand how prisms and lenses refract and disperse light

7. Be able to describe how simple optical devices work

8. Understand refraction as an effect of differences of velocities in differentmedia

9.

10. Understand the processes of dispersion, interference, diffraction andpolarisation of light


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Strengths

Forces a focus on progression in big

ideas rather than coverage

Supports incremental, rather than entityview of ability

Supports strong value-added inferences


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Weaknesses

Some subjects fit the model better thanothers

Some (accepted) models of curriculumbecome non-viable

Requires careful articulation betweencurriculum, standards, and assessment

May focus on aspects relativelyinsensitive to instruction

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