Assessment as/is Curriculum
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Note - This review needs amending
“The VCAA [Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority] provides high quality curriculum, assessment and reporting for all Victorian students and learners by developing and implementing the: Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF), Victorian Curriculum, National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE), Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) and the Vocational Education and Training (VET)” (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2018)
Educators within Victoria use VCAA to create year long plans for student’s education within their specialised subject area. Using the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) educators are given individual subject webpages where all resources are located. These resources contain; an “Accreditation period,” for the study design or “Curriculum,” a collection of “Assessment[s]” (the main document of note being the examiners report), and lastly a collection of “Support material” which contains an “Advice for teachers” document (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2018).
With regards to the Fine(r) Arts in the Victorian Curriculum, there appears to be few resources to help educators with assessment. While these previous collection of resources with descriptions appears fully formed, I have noticed a deficit in the “Assessment” resources, and it is with this Literature Review, I will make theorised suggestions for improvement.
ASSESSMENT
The “Assessment” section of the VCAA, has a cyclical issue; the “School-based Assessment report” refers to the “Study Design,” which in turn refers back to the “School-based Assessment report”. The “School-based assessment report” (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2018) specifically states:
“The Study Design should be used as the main source of assessment, and is supported by any other material found on the VCE study page for VCE Art [ and Studio Art ].” (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2018)
Yet when you read the Study Design no assessment strategies are offered, only potential assessment types or “Outcomes”(Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2018). It should be noted and contrasted that the VCE VCD teaching resources educators have access to clear “Performance Descriptors” rubrics which teachers can use to inform their own assessments and marking of students on (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2018). As it is offered for VCD, it is odd that the same provisions are not made for the Fine(r) Arts.
These “Performance Descriptors” are apparently justified for the VCD, as it is a more “prescribed” curriculum, with specific areas of study and rules that need to be followed; Unlike the Fine(r) Arts, were the outcomes and artefacts of learning are “more free” (Coleman, DR Kathryn, (2018, Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2018). While I agree that the VCD is more “prescribed” than the Fine(r) Arts; I disagree that teachers are therefore excluded from having such a useful resource.
EXAMINATION
Educators learn alongside their students, assessing not only how their students work, but how their pedagogy works with their students. Teachers develop their pedagogy in two ways; Professional Development seminars, and the Clinical Teaching Cycle.
Clinical Teaching Cycle (CTC)
What is the learner ready to learn?
What are the possible evidence based interventions?
What is the preferred intervention and how will it be resourced and implemented?
What is the expected impact on learning and how will it be evaluated?
What happened after the implementation of the intervention and how can this be interpreted?
(MGSE lecture slides, 2018)
Which could be inferred that a VCE students CTC would look similar to;
Unit 3 or 4
School assessed tasks/artwork or outcome
Outcome and will be implemented within class
Expected impact will be an increased ZAD, it will be evaluated by a pretest to gauge current ZAD before and without intervention
The ZAD went up, the intervention can be inferred as a success.
(Hypothesised example)
This system of development works for teachers up until their students reach their final semester of their VCE Unit. VCE students sit their exams, and instead of teachers looking at their students results, and assess not only their students development but their teaching; they are unable to. Teachers are given a number grade and an overall examiners report of the entire cohort of Victoria, meaning that teachers are unable to analyse what is working and not working in their own teaching practice.
Teachers instead of reading real results, have to rely on the VCE examiners reports to find out how to teach for the future. Yet, even though it is the only thing that helps teachers to understand what marks went where and how, it is impressively vague.
To fully comprehend, or to decipher, what is wanted by the examiners you have to become an assessor.
“All appointed assessors receive a full day's training covering all aspects of the assessment process which is recognised by the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) as approved professional development [PD]. During the course of training, a broad range of student responses are explored to establish clear and consistent benchmarks for all assessors.”(SSMS, 2018)
While having this PD Day offered to educators, some might not have the time or want to assess the VCE exams. Meaning that educators instead have to try and decipher whether or not they fully prepared their students enough off the past years grades, their students current testing scores, and the examiners report for both the current and past year. Yet, The report offers very confused and at times not specific enough answers.
The sample answers that they provide often lack clarity; for example;
“If the student linked the use of line with the art principle of movement, this inevitably led to the development of a high-scoring answer.” (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2018)
Yet of a student was to only to “link … art principles of movement” they would not receive a high scoring answer, all aspects of the questions must be answered(Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2018). The system currently in place for teachers to receive feedback on their students work, just isn't conducive to the way a teacher adjusts their own teaching style.
A current working for of analysing teachers work is the assessments that their students partake in, that immediate and personalised data is the main catalyst for teachers changing their own knowledge.
SOLUTION
As may have been noticed within this paper, my own Pedagogy is assessment focused, and while not all other Art and teachers are, Assessment has to come into our teaching eventually.
The benefits of assessment focused pedagogy is that it enables clarity of understanding for students as well as reducing bias in teacher marking. while, some teachers find this assessment focused Pedagogy unconducive of a creative practice that is not the intention. Conformity in regards to assessment ensures that teachers are all consistent when it comes to students work, it also aids in teachers worry if they are a “”hard” marker” (Appendix 1), and it allows students to know what is expected of them. However, it does not hinder the creative process it could be argued that “embracing a limitation could … drive creativity” (TED Talks, 2013). moreover, having access to a prescribed rubric should be seen as a legitimisation of work being marked for “Key knowledge” and “Key Skills” as prescribed by Curriculum, rather than unlearned talent from a “Bludge subject” (Coleman, DR Kathryn, (2018), Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2018).
From this Literature Review it can be noticed that there are two main areas of VCAA’s Assessment which currently fails itself: Their examiners reports, and their lack of “Performance Descriptors” or suggested rubrics for the Fine(r) Art Subjects. It is from these two points of failure that I have come up with two theories recommendations.
First recommendation is that there should be a collection of “Performance Descriptors” available for the Fine(r) Arts, having this as an option and suggestion, can dramatically increase teachers ability to mark with consistency between other schools rather that just within one. By adding this recommendation the “COURSEWORK UNIT 3/4... Grade Distribution" might change from an upwards gradient, to a more regular Bell curve similar to the “WRITTEN EXAMINATION...Grade Distribution” (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2018). This recommendation should not be difficult to implement as the VCD “Performance Descriptors” could be used as a framework to work off of (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2018).
The second recommendation is however, is more challenging to implement. A complete overhaul of the current Examinar reporting method. The current Examiner reports are vague, hard to follow, and hinders impactful Professional Development to teachers, as the information is just information, and isn’t anchored enough.
The examiners report should be clear, informative and transparent about what assessors are looking for in exams. Rather than descriptive prose teachers should be given clear criterion that assessors are being marked from. Therefore an alternative to the current written form would be, a matrix rubric, giving Teachers a full understanding of what is required to receive what marks.
To show that these recommendations are not unreasonable I have attached them to the end of this literature Review as Appendices.
Lastly a final additional recommendation would see that at the completion of the Examination period, and the ATAR results release, Teachers could be given back the Exam Papers of their students. Thereby allowing educators to assess their students one last time, and allow them to reflect on their students learning, and their teaching.
While currently I am unaware as to why exams are not returned (logistics, privacy, ect) if it is up to the students to decide whether or not to release their papers back to their teachers, the inclusion of a small check box at the start of the exam wouldn’t be too hard to achieve.
The VCAA needs to change their approach on teaching, and this time instead of teaching the students, they need to focus on how to teach the teachers.
India Ross
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