Narrator

Welcome to the Capability Building Series driving effective assessment practices in the classroom and across the school. My name is Rebecca Kendall and I lead the Effective Assessment Practices team. This series of short videos explores the place of assessment within curriculum reform and department frameworks.

It defines formative and summative assessment, introduces the effective assessment practices guide for teachers and leaders, and explores how you can lead and support your school to implement effective assessment practices.

I would like to begin by acknowledging that I am joining you from Gadigal Country. I recognise the Ongoing Custodians of the lands and waterways where we work and live. I pay respects to Elders past and present as ongoing teachers of knowledge, songlines, and stories.

This video is the first in a series on driving effective assessment practices in the classroom and across the school. It unpacks what assessment is and why it matters. It explores the place of assessment within curriculum reform and department frameworks and defines formative and summative assessment.

Section one, setting the scene.

Curriculum reform provides a unique opportunity to strengthen understanding of effective assessment across NSW. As you can see on screen, Masters states that findings from learning research underscore the importance of teachers establishing where students are in their learning to guide next steps in teaching and learning.

By establishing a consistent understanding of effective assessment and evidence based, high impact formative assessment strategies across the department, we can ensure the intentions of the NSW curriculum are reflected in school based assessment practices and activities.

Our plan for NSW Public Education sets our direction and priorities for the coming years and harnesses the commitment of our teachers and schools to provide an outstanding education for every learner. The plan outlines how we, as the department, will create an equitable and outstanding education system and strengthen trust and respect for the teaching profession.

One of the focus areas of the plan is to deliver outstanding leadership, teaching and learning through the agreed actions of delivering effective teaching practices through explicit teaching and effective feedback underpinned by high expectations, providing high quality evidence based curriculum resources, and by strengthening high quality assessment.

Aligned to our plan for NSW Public Education, schools have the School Excellence Framework that describes what excellence looks like across a number of domains and how schools can monitor their own strategic progress across those areas.

Assessment stands alone as an element in the learning domain, and the excelling statement specifically calls out that formative assessment is integrated into teaching practice in every classroom. It is important to note that formative assessment appears in multiple themes across the learning, teaching and leading domains. Regardless of your school's strategic plan and strategic directions, effective assessment practices can be strengthened to drive school improvement.

The NESA website provides advice about formative and summative assessment. Note that this is a shift from NESA's previous advice, which describes assessment through the lenses of as, of, and for learning. It is important that you are familiar and confident with this updated advice and understand the implications for your teaching and assessment practice.

Of significance is the updated advice on holistic on balance judgments. Assessment information gathered through both formative and summative assessment opportunities should be used to make holistic on balance judgments of student learning.

Effective implementation of evidence based formative assessment strategies ensures that teachers confidently rely on information gathered through observations, work samples and assessment data to make informed and accurate on balance judgments of student learning and achievement. This is represented in the Venn diagram that you can see on the screen now.

In our plan for NSW Public Education, there is a focus on strengthening high quality assessment as well as delivering explicit teaching practices. Formative assessment strategies are key to supporting explicit teaching. Here we can see the explicit teaching graphic alongside high impact formative assessment strategies. You will notice the alignment between the two.

Learning intentions and success criteria, effective feedback, effective questioning and checking for understanding are both explicit teaching strategies and high impact formative assessment strategies. By delivering formative assessment practices, you are also supporting explicit teaching.

We will now explore formative and summative assessment. Formative assessment can be viewed as all activities undertaken by teachers and or students that provide information that is used to modify, refine and improve teaching and learning activities. It is generally thought of as directly informing the next steps in whole class or individual student learning.

Summative assessment is used to evaluate student achievement of specific content knowledge and skills against expected curriculum standards. It can and should also be used formatively. For example, to provide actionable feedback and identify further learning opportunities to reinforce and consolidate student understanding.

Summative assessments provide opportunities for teachers to confirm the view of the student that they have developed as a student progresses in their learning.

The distinction between formative and summative assessment relates to how the information from assessment is used. Data from the same assessment may be used both formatively and summatively. Robert Stake captured the distinction between summative and formative assessment in this way. When the cook tastes the soup while they are cooking, that's formative. When the customer tastes the soup, that's summative. Think about when you're cooking a meal. As you cook, you taste along the way, you adjust the ingredients.

This is an example of formative assessment. You taste, you take in the information, and you make adjustments as you continue. When your friends and family taste the meal and let you know what they think about it, this is an example of summative assessment. They only taste the meal at the end and evaluate how delicious it is. If you were to cook the same meal again, you might use the feedback from your friends and family to adjust the recipe, using the summative assessment in a formative way.

The framework on screen is based on the model William and Thompson developed and was later used by Black and William. It shows how high impact formative assessment strategies work together to empower students to answer the questions, where am I going by using learning intentions and success criteria.

Gather information about how am I going through effective feedback, peer assessment and self assessment and plan where to next through goal setting. These questions support students to develop as critical autonomous learners who have the skills to reflect on their learning and plan next steps to achieve their goals. This is also known as assessment capable learners.

As previously mentioned, summative assessment provides opportunities for teachers to confirm the view of the student developed through formative assessment practices. Summative assessment must be intentionally and strategically embedded in teaching and learning, including through the design and development of quality assessment tasks.

The elements of effective assessment form a framework to support the design of high quality formal assessment. The elements of effective assessment are equity, validity, reliability, transparency, timeliness, feedback and engagement.

Devised from a strong evidence base, the elements of effective assessment represent common themes from across key policy and curriculum documents, with a particular focus on what works best 2020. NESA's advice on assessment and CESE's reassessing assessment. These key policy and curriculum documents are explored within the effective assessment practices guide which is introduced in the next video.

This diagram shows the modes of assessment. This is a really great tool to help you to consider the different forms of assessment that could and should be used in your teaching practice. Assessments to the left of the continuum tend to be more formative in nature. Assessments to the right tend to be more summative.

On the left, unstructured assessments may include general classroom observations that teachers make day by day when students are being frequently assessed on learning outcomes. In the middle of the table, you can see the slightly structured and more structured assessment opportunities. These are a key part of school assessment.

It is important that these assessment opportunities are intentionally planned for and embedded before lessons. The slightly structured assessments provide deliberate opportunities for teachers to make observations with clear intent. The more structured assessments should be embedded into teaching and learning programs or units of work.

On the right, some of the most structured large scale standardised assessments in NSW include NAPLAN, check in assessments and HSC examinations. View the questions on screen and reflect on your understanding. If you are engaging with colleagues, feel free to pause the video to share and discuss your thoughts.

For further information, or if you have any questions, please contact us at contactcurriculumreform@det.nsw.edu.au using the subject line effective assessment practices. The link to the guide is on screen now in the form of a QR code and can also be accessed via the strengthening assessment webpage.

We thank you for taking the time to view this presentation today and we look forward to hearing about how you implement effective assessment practices in your school.

[End transcript]

Narrator

Welcome to part 2 of the Capability Building series, Driving effective assessment practices in the classroom and across the school. My name is Vanessa Hewitt and I work as a part of the effective assessment practices team.

I would like to begin by acknowledging that I'm joining you from Dharawal Country. I recognise the Ongoing Custodians of the lands and waterways where we work and live. We pay respect to Elders past and present as ongoing teachers of knowledge, songlines and stories. We strive to ensure every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learner in NSW achieves their potential through education.

This video is part 2 in a series on driving effective assessment practices in the classroom and across the school. This video introduces the effective assessment practices guide. For more information about the place of assessment within curriculum reform and department frameworks and formative and summative assessment, please view part 1, What is assessment and why does it matter?

To support teachers and leaders in implementing and strengthening assessment, the department has developed the effective assessment practices guide. The guide supports teachers and school leaders K-10 in deepening their understanding of assessment. It is intended to serve as a reference tool to be used at point of need and is not designed to be read from start to finish. Readers should dip in and dip out of the guide based on need.

On screen now is a bit of an overview of what's included in the guide and I'll give you a moment to read that. The guide can be used in a variety of ways to support, evaluate and refine assessment practices. It can be used as an on demand reference tool to access information and advice on assessment. It can be used as a collaborative planning aid to guide conversations and assessment planning with colleagues, or it can be used as a catalyst for deeper reflection to provoke thought on the purpose, design and use of assessment.

The effective assessment practices guide aligns with the intentions of our plan for NSW public education and provides practical examples as to how teachers and leaders can contribute to achieving goals of the plan. The effective assessment practices guide is housed on the department's website. To access it, go to the teaching and learning tab, down to assessment, click on strengthening assessment, and then effective assessment advice.

There is a quick link at the top of the page here, or you can scroll down for more detailed information.

The guide has been built with the same software as some existing professional learning and microlearning, so you may notice that it has a similar look and feel to these resources. It's important to note that the guide has a very different functionality. It is not necessary to complete one section in order to move to the next.

As we've said previously, the guide is not designed to be read from start to finish. It should be used as a reference tool, with users dipping in and out based on need. The guide is structured into sections displayed on screen now.

The Introduction, assessment, design of effective assessment, consistent teacher judgment, planning for and implementing high impact formative assessment practices, using assessment data, and more information. Each section is structured into chapters. The navigation pane here on the left can be used to quickly access information. Alternatively, you can use the search function here.

Throughout the guide, there are reflection questions and checkpoints to support teachers and leaders to strengthen their understanding, as well as a range of printable discussion and implementation tools. Embedded within the guide are a range of carefully developed reflection and implementation tools designed to support you to analyse and strengthen assessment practices in your classroom and across the school.

On the screen you can see a list of the reflection and implementation tools that are embedded within the guide. Here you can see a list of useful links and resources relevant to effective assessment practices. The effective assessment practice webpage is updated regularly with resources and professional learning.

Read through the questions on screen and reflect on your understanding. If you are engaging with colleagues, share and discuss your thoughts.

For further information, or if you have any questions, please contact us at contactcurriculumreform@det.nsw.edu.au using the subject line effective assessment practices. A link to the guide is on the screen in the form of a QR code, and it can also be accessed via the strengthening assessment webpage.

We thank you for taking the time to view this presentation today and we look forward to seeing how you implement effective assessment practices in your schools.

[End transcript]

Narrator

Welcome to part 3a of the Capability Building series driving effective assessment practices in the classroom and across the school. My name is Erin McShane and I work with the Effective Assessment Practices team. I would like to begin by acknowledging that I am joining you from Awabakal Country. I recognise the Ongoing Custodians of the lands and waterways where we work and live.

We pay respect to Elders past and present as ongoing teachers of knowledge, songlines and stories. We strive to ensure that every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learner in NSW achieves their potential through education.

This video is part 3a in a series on driving effective assessment practices in the classroom and across the school. In this video, we will look at how you can lead and support your school to implement effective assessment practices in a primary setting.

For information about leading and supporting effective assessment in secondary settings, please view part 3b, leading effective assessment in a secondary setting.

This is one model for managing curriculum change that is included in the Leading Effective Curriculum Implementation professional learning, also known as LECI, that is aimed at middle leaders. To create conditions for growth in effective assessment practices, the following change enablers are required.

Consideration of what has worked well for your school context already. A deep understanding of the evidence base, high levels of relational trust, permission to take risk and try new assessment practices, and an authorising environment to rely on observations from formative assessment to inform unbalanced judgments.

When managing change in assessment practices, it is important to ensure assessment is a whole school priority, staff are supported as they learn about and implement changes to assessment. Existing expertise of staff is utilised to efficiently support change. Leaders have credibility to lead change. They need to demonstrate that they deeply understand the pedagogy or curriculum and must be able to effectively communicate the case for change.

And staff are engaged in the planning phases to support ownership of changes. When embedding new assessment strategies or building confidence with any new pedagogy, it is important to start small. Don't try to do everything at once.

When implementing change, it is really important not to try to do everything at once. Pick one area to focus on at a time. Begin any implementation by developing your own understanding first. Make sure you read the research, watch the videos, and use the resources that are available. You need to be the expert in your school so you have the credibility to lead.

Use your knowledge to lead your team to a consistent understanding of the strategy you are implementing. Collaboratively plan to implement the strategy with your students. Start small. Focus on one KLA or year group, for example.

Share experiences among the team of implementation. Use the expertise in your team. If someone has found something that works, share this by organising team teaching or lesson observations. Support staff who may need it.

And lastly, evaluate implementation. If things are not working well, it is okay to go back to the first step and work your way through again. If implementation is going well, scale to a larger group of students and ensure you sustain this practice while you begin a new cycle with the next strategy.

We will now unpack how this model may be implemented in a primary setting.

Let's consider this scenario. Following the semester one reporting period, a stage two team identified that they needed to strengthen consistent teacher judgment practices. This became apparent during a moderation session when the team was reviewing student work samples and there were inconsistencies in teacher judgments of student achievement.

We will now go through a suggested process for leading change in assessment practices in response to this scenario and align to the model for leading curriculum change outlined on the previous slide.

This process starts with leadership credibility. To ensure credibility, the Stage 2 AP and APC&I Develop their understanding of consistent teacher judgment by engaging with the consistent teacher judgment section of the effective assessment practices guide, including using the reflection questions for leaders and also familiarising themselves with the reflection questions for teachers.

To drive effective change, all staff must be informed. To develop their capabilities, the team explores the consistent teacher judgment section off the guide during a stage meeting. The AP and APC&I strategically guide the discussion and use the teacher reflection questions to deepen understanding.

They consider how they might strengthen consistent teacher judgment across a whole term or semester, rather than discovering inconsistencies in teacher judgment in a moderation session at the end of the period of the learning.

The AP and APC&I draw attention to the principal moderation reflection activity and flag that they will use it at the end of the period of learning. This ensures that the team is informed and has a shared understanding of consistent teacher judgment moving forward.

To ensure teachers have ownership of change, and that change is strategically planned, the team selects an area of focus. They have decided to focus on the identification and development of assessment opportunities during the collaborative design of units. They identify particular tasks and activities throughout the unit that they will review and discuss during the period of learning.

They establish a shared understanding of what success looks like for their students for each task or activity. The team uses the elements of effective assessment to plan a quality summative assessment for the end of the unit and determine what success looks like for this assessment.

The AP and APC&I review the stage meeting agendas for the term and intentionally plan opportunities to review and discuss student work samples. That is the assessment opportunities identified during the collaborative planning of the unit of work. This provides a forum for the team to ensure that they are making consistent judgements of student achievement throughout the period of learning.

Intentionally planned opportunities for professional dialogue ensures that teachers are supported and expertise is effectively utilised and leveraged to strengthen teaching practice. At the end of the period of learning, the AP and APC&I facilitate a moderation session to review the plan's summative task. They use the moderation reflection activity embedded in the effective assessment practices guide. The team notices that there are fewer discrepancies in their judgment of student achievement.

Following this session, the AP and APC&I review and evaluate the impact of the changes made to consistent teacher judgment practices. They consider the changes implemented, including assessment opportunities planned during collaborative design, including establishing a shared understanding of what success looks like.

Intentional discussions to review student work samples during stage meetings throughout the period of learning, and also a facilitated moderation session. They identify what worked well and what could be strengthened further. They identify a focus for the next period of learning and prepare to share this with their team.

CTJ is an ongoing process and it is important to continually track and monitor the moderation practices of your team to ensure that consistent teacher judgment practices are implemented effectively and impactfully.

As you undertake change, it is important to consider how progress may be measured. On screen are some ways that growth in assessment could be determined. This is not an exhaustive list and it is important to remember that growth will look different in every school context.

View the questions on screen and reflect on your understanding. If you are engaging with colleagues, please feel free to pause the video to share and discuss your thoughts.

For further information or if you have any questions, please contact us at contactcurriculumreform@det.nsw.edu.au. using the subject line, effective assessment practices. The link to the guide is on the screen in the form of a QR code, and it can also be accessed by the strengthening assessment webpage.

We thank you for taking the time to view this presentation today, and we look forward to seeing how you implement effective assessment practices in your school.

[End transcript]

Narrator

Welcome to part 3b of the Capability Building Series, driving effective assessment practices in the classroom and across the school. My name is Rebecca Kendall and I lead the Effective Assessment Practices team.

I would like to begin by acknowledging that I am joining you from Gadigal country. I recognise the Ongoing Custodians of the lands and waterways where we work and live. I pay my respects to elders past and present as ongoing teachers of knowledge, songlines and stories.

This video is part 3b of a series of videos on driving effective assessment practices in the classroom and across the school. In this video, we look at how you can lead and support your school to implement effective assessment practices in a secondary setting. For information about leading and supporting effective assessment in a primary setting, please view part 3a.

On screen now is one model for managing curriculum change. It is included in the Leading Effective Curriculum Implementation, or LECI, professional learning aimed at middle leaders. To create the conditions for growth in effective assessment practices, the following change enablers are required.

Consideration of what has worked well for your school context already, a deep understanding of the evidence base, high levels of relational trust, permission to take risks and try new assessment practices, and an authorising environment to rely on observations from formative assessment to inform on balance judgements.

When managing change in assessment practices, it is important to ensure that assessment is a whole school priority, staff are supported as they learn about and implement changes to assessment, the existing expertise of staff is utilised to efficiently support change, that leaders have credibility to lead that change.

They need to demonstrate that they deeply understand the pedagogy or curriculum and must be able to effectively communicate the case for change, and that staff are engaged in the planning phases to support ownership of changes.

When embedding new assessment strategies or building confidence with any new pedagogy, it is important to start small. Don't try and do everything at once. When implementing change, pick one area to focus on at a time. Begin any implementation journey by developing your own understanding first. Engage with the research, watch the videos, access the resources. You need to be the expert in your school so that you have credibility to lead.

Use this knowledge to lead your team to a consistent understanding of the strategy that you are implementing. Collaboratively plan to implement the strategy with your students. Start small, focusing on just one KLA or year group, for example.

Share experiences amongst the team of teachers currently implementing. Use the expertise in your team. If somebody has found something that works really well, share this by organising a team teaching or lesson observation. Support staff who need it.

Evaluate implementation. If things are not working well, go back to the first step and work your way through again. If implementation is going well, scale to a larger group of students and ensure you sustain this practice while you begin a new cycle with the next strategy.

We will now explore how this model can be implemented in a secondary setting. Let's consider this scenario. A HSIE head teacher used a faculty meeting to discuss feedback practices. They used the implementation tool effective feedback, found in the effective assessment practices guide, as a prompt.

During this discussion, it became apparent that a broad and inconsistent range of strategies were being used for the provision of feedback. We will now go through a suggested process for leading change in assessment practices in response to this scenario and align to the model for leading curriculum change we explored on the previous slide.

To ensure leadership credibility, the HSIE headteacher develops their understanding of effective feedback by engaging with the effective feedback section of the guide, including using the reflection questions for leaders and familiarising themselves with the reflection questions for teachers.

To develop their capability, the team explores the effective feedback section of the guide during a faculty meeting. The head teacher strategically guides the discussion and uses the teacher reflection questions to deepen understanding.

They consider how they might strengthen effective feedback practices across a whole term or semester. This ensures that the team is informed and has a shared understanding of feedback moving forward.

The team reviews an upcoming project that year 8 students will complete. They use the implementation tool effective feedback to consider existing opportunities for the provision of feedback and identify where feedback practices can be strengthened with a focus on specific actionable feedback.

The team determines key points where feedback must be provided and identifies explicit quality criteria that will form the basis of the feedback. They plan for dedicated time for students to action the feedback. This planning process ensures the team has ownership over strategically planned focus areas.

The HSIE headteacher schedules time in regular faculty meetings to discuss feedback practices. Team members share their successes and challenges. One teacher identifies that their students are having trouble actioning their feedback. Another teacher, who has experienced success in this area, offers to team teach a lesson and model what they are doing.

Intentionally planned opportunities for professional dialogue ensure that teachers are supported and that expertise is effectively utilised and leveraged to strengthen teaching practice. Once the year 8 students have completed the project, the faculty reviews the quality of work and compares it to the previous year's cohort. They notice significant growth in the quality of work presented. The team concludes that providing specific, actionable feedback, along with dedicated time to enact that feedback, resulted in students presenting work of a higher quality. They identified what worked well and what could be strengthened further. The faculty plans to repeat the process they underwent with year 8 across stages 4 and 5.

As you undertake change, it is important to consider how progress may be measured. On screen now are some ways that growth in assessment could be determined. This is not an exhaustive list and it is important to remember that growth will look different in every school context.

View the questions on screen and reflect on your understanding. If you are engaging with colleagues feel free to pause the video to share and discuss your thoughts.

For further information, or if you have any questions, please contact us at contactcurriculumreform@det.nsw.edu.au using the subject line effective assessment practices. The link to the effective assessment practices guide is on screen in the form of a QR code, and it can also be accessed via the strengthening assessment webpage.

We thank you for taking the time to view this presentation today, and we look forward to hearing about how you implement effective assessment practices in your schools.

[End transcript]