GCSE science 'dumbed down', says exam watchdog - Education News, Education - The Independent

GCSE science 'dumbed down', says exam watchdog - Education News, Education - The Independent

Harold Jarche » Informal learning works for new hires

Harold Jarche » Informal learning works for new hires

Warwick Mansell: The evidence shows testing is unnecessary - Schools, Education - The Independent

Warwick Mansell: The evidence shows testing is unnecessary - Schools, Education - The Independent: "In last year's Select Committee inquiry into exams, the Government was the only one of 52 respondents to defend the current system. Ranged against it in recent years have been the select committee itself, the Children's Society, the Royal Society and a host of other scientific organisations, the Cambridge University-based Primary Review, at least one major exam board, teachers' unions and many others. Even Ofsted and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority have highlighted problems. The central argument is that holding teachers to account for their pupils' performance through a series of narrowly-focused, often predictable, tests has damaged children's deeper understanding."

MindMapping

Nothing new under the sun… At least I thought so until recently, when I had to cover horrendous lesson with one cheesy dated and American (in the way, how they present things, like they have just discovered new world) video. Except these facts and that it was lower set year 11 absolutely not interested and I would add offended by the way how it was presented, I think it was actually great resource. Not for year 11 and probably not as classroom – rather teacher’s tool. The reason is the great way, how to make notes on lectures and text from the book.

Almost every student today knows how to use mind map for brainstorming and revision. But I have never seen it using for notes taking. And it is soooo obvious. Title as the main idea in the middle. Subtitles/keywords as branches resp. sub-branches and then some details, more relationships etc. I had a go with Y7 today to make notes on topic from geography this way – well. I am not sure whether my instructional approach worked with everybody (some mind maps they made were just with one level of keywords), but as I plan to add it to my repertoire, I believe, they will become more accomplished (and I will improve my instructions).

It also reminded me, that I keep forgetting, that sometimes I can make students more confused. My instructions are not as clear as I think they are. Another personal/professional target…

No more ‘Summative Purpose’?

Reading material for my course I found an article arguing for change in terminology or better for shift in terminology in assessment. It all became more clear now, however, I do not know, whether to start using new terminology in my essay and further writing, or keep the old one, standard and used by many authors before.

What is it all about? Paul E. Newton in Clarifying the purposes of educational assessment argues, that words Assessment, Summative assessment, Formative assessment or construction like summative and formative purposes are not defined clearly and causes confusion. There is traditional way in looking at formative assessment as opposite to summative assessment. However Mr.. Newton says, that those two terms are from different categories, therefore they cannot stand in opposite.

1. claim – assessment is a judgment. Can be done with different purposes in mind and different methods can be used. (Stop using formative, summative etc.?)

2. claim – there is no formative judgment (Formative assessment), but there is an assessment with formative purpose or many other purposes, depending on how we use information gained from the judgment.

3. claim - There is no summative purpose. Assessment can be summative, descriptive, norm-referenced, criterion referenced… depending what date and in what form we are collecting.

So there should be distinction between purpose of the assessment based on the use we put the data in (formative, diagnostic, system monitoring)  and the judgment which can be based on the continuum between summative (using quantitative terms) and descriptive (using qualitative terms).

In that case, according to Mr. Newton we can avoid confusion in using summative data for formative purposes or any other purposes, or using descriptive data for that sake too.

Traditionally the main difference between summative and formative was in timing and use. Formative being used during the learning process and summative at the end. And Formative was about using data to enhance learning, to help student etc. Summative was more about collecting data about the achievement. But apparently in new literature (and more importantly in classroom) this timing distinction is no more valid. Summative data can be used for formative purposes not only at the end, as we collect data on prediction and can use them to intervene, if somebody is underachieving. This means we use summative data during the process of learning…