Assessment is a complex landscape. Debates about whether summative or formative assessment, or a combination of both, offers the best approach to assess students’ learning have been dominating international and local literature for years. In Malta, this discussion has been going on for over two decades where the emphasis has been on a more student-centred approach to teaching and learning.
The launch of the National Curriculum Framework for All (NCF) has further strengthened this call whose recommendations paved the way for a learning outcomes-based approach and a fairer assessment that takes into account the work done during the teaching and learning process.
Thus, the emphasis is shifting to assessment as the bridge (Wiliam, 2016) between teaching and learning rather than as the endpoint, where little, or nothing, can be done to ameliorate the situation.
This reform should start to reap its benefits from this scholastic year, where major changes in assessment and teaching and learning will be rolled out.
In view of this shift that had long been coming, the Education Ministry had started offering support in schools in the introduction, development, implementation and sustainability of Assessment for Learning (AfL). Following a two-and-a-half-year process of reflection and observation in my daily work with different teachers, a series of questions arose:
• What do teachers think about AfL?
• Why is it that some teachers are resisting AfL?
• Why are they saying that they have been using it when informal conversations are indicating otherwise?
• Is it an issue of a lack of understanding?
• What can be done further to help the teachers appreciate more the philosophy of AfL?
• Is it a question of a clash between their beliefs and practices? – What is it?
In the attempt to answer these questions, this study focused on the relationship between the beliefs and practices about AfL of Maltese State primary school teachers in one college. Particularly, the two research questions that guided this study were:
What are the connections between the beliefs and practices of teachers who are novice AfL practitioners in Maltese State primary schools?
How could a collaborative action research study influence the connections between the teacher’s AfL beliefs and practices, and therefore of prospective AfL practitioners?
Throughout the study, positivism – the idea that there is a fixed and given reality about which human beings are powerless – was resisted and the guiding theoretical framework was social constructionism based on an interpretive paradigm. Social constructionism states that what we know and how we come to know are socially constructed events (Crotty, 1998).
This investigation was carried out in two phases over the span of a year – the first phase in May-June 2014 and the second phase from September 2014 to June 2015. The first phase consisted of collecting data from two open-ended questionnaires sent to 85 teachers and eight heads of schools. The second part of the study consisted of a nine-month long study with three teachers who were new to AfL.
These participants took on the role of action researchers to improve their class situations by embedding a set of AfL strategies in their lessons. Multiple data sources, including group discussions, individual feedback sessions, record-keeping booklets, semi-structured interviews with the teachers and their students and teachers’ self-written stories were used. These led to a by-product booklet of the collaborative action research work, comprising three short authentic teachers’ stories together with their students’ voices. Anyone interested in a free copy may send the author an e-mail at the address below.
Both research phases generated rich qualitative data which were analysed from a qualitative content analysis lens. Data coding and analysis were assisted by the qualitative data analysis software NVIVO.
Findings of the first phase indicate that the overarching situation across the primary years consists in a positive level of thought, which is accompanied by a limited understanding and a higher degree of mechanical AfL practice. Thus, the relationship is a divergent to a convergent one – a complex one in that there is not a neat link between the two.
Furthermore, this connection transcends into different degrees across the year groups, with the Year One to Year Four teachers portraying a semi-complex relationship while the Year Five and Six groups (Junior years) present a complex one. A semi-complex relationship includes two levels of relations between the levels of thought, understanding and practice – divergent and semi-divergent/convergent one. In contrast, a complex relationship comprises three levels of relations – convergent, divergent and a semi-divergent/convergent one.
Findings from the collaborative action research part show that this mode of teachers’ professional learning had an overall positive influence on the beliefs-to-practice relationship, albeit to different degrees of improvement. Nonetheless, the participants still ended with a wobbly belief about AfL having the same effect on all the students. Hence, the point that is being raised is whether AfL is seen as a pedagogy for the privileged students rather than for everyone.
The contribution to knowledge that this study has made is that, not only is the belief to practice relationship a matter of degree, but it has also revealed that the teachers’ beliefs about the pedagogy is underpinned by their perception of the students’ attitudes and motivation towards learning. Thus, the teachers’ perceptions of the students are affecting their expectations and perspectives of the success, or otherwise, of AfL.
The argument being put forward by the teachers is that AfL works mostly with the motivated and ideal students rather than with the unmotivated ones. However, the question is – who is responsible to develop and foster the students’ motivation and love for learning? Surely, this job is not only limited to teachers.
This research has led to many more questions rather than answers and some of the recommendations that were put forward include the need for:
• A study of the effect of AfL on students with a statement of needs;
• A similar study in other colleges to have a national snapshot, as this study cannot, and did not attempt, to be generalised;
• A comparative study between the different sectors;
• A study across the different learning tracks in the secondary education sector;
• A study of the difference in the teachers’ beliefs, if any, following a course in AfL in any of the local or international service provider institutions;
• All teaching practicums to include an element of action research on AfL practices because whatever programmes or approaches teachers use, the underpinning philosophy should be of formative nature.
Doreen Said Pace has been working in the State educational sector for the past 19 years. She was recently appointed as education officer for curriculum at St George Preca College. She holds a degree in education from the University of Malta, a diploma in management from the UK ILM Institute, and a postgraduate Certificate in Training the Trainer on the Learning Outcomes Framework.
She was recently awarded a doctorate from the University of Sheffield. Her research focused on the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices about AfL and the influence of collaborative action research on the beliefs to practice relationship. This first doctoral study since the inception of AfL in State primary schools would not have been possible without the full funding of the Malta Government Scholarship Scheme (MGSS – 2013).
dspnov1977@gmail.com