Teaching Approaches/Assessment

Assessment may take many forms, including whole class, and individual. Readers should consider reading the pages on these approaches in addition to the guidance given below. Where appropriate links have been incorporated - if you are a wiki-contributor, please do add further internal links, and if of high quality (especially CC licenced), external too.

High Quality Questioning

Readers should refer to the general guidance Questioning Research Summary And the more practical Types Of Question As well as our resources ... (e.g. Mark Dawes)

With respect to assessment, should specifically note

Effective Group Work

Group work effective for raising standards for all Bear in mind, e.g. Bob Slavin's point re aim being for (general point, not a quote) "all in the group to be able to give and explain the correct answer, not just for all in the group to be able to parrot it, or for the group (as a collective) to be able to give an answer (which could stem from one individual)".

Group Talk - a Method for Assessment?

Why do it? What are the benefits to the learner?

• Higher-level thinking Pupils are challenged to defend, review and modify their ideas with their peers. It encourages reflection and metacognition (thinking about one’s own thinking). Pupils often communicate ideas better with other pupils than with teachers.

• Assessment for learning Effectively reveals the progress of the pupil to the teacher, encouraging the pupil to self- and peer-assess while allowing the teacher to plan more effectively. As such, group talk complements methods embraced as Assessment for learning.

• Illustrating science in action Working scientists use group talk – in class it models how they work, supporting the teaching of the ‘ideas and evidence’ aspects of scientific enquiry.

• Developing the whole child The ability to resolve disagreements is a life-skill.

Pupils become more reflective as they try to arrive at a consensus by expressing different points of view; or work collaboratively to explore ideas, plan and make decisions. Further, it supports the development of literacy.

• Pupil motivation and emotional involvement When argument is taking place, and pupils are actively prompted and provoked to defend a point of view – by the teacher and by others – it raises the emotional involvement in a topic, so that pupils are more engaged. In essence, they are being encouraged to ‘care’ about the science viewpoint they have, and to take a stand for or against it, even if they concede to others along the way. These features are more common in good English, RE and humanities lessons.

• Variety and learning styles Can be used as an alternative to written or practical work (for example, experiments), or just listening as the teacher explains and demonstrates. Group talk encourages the use of different learning styles and thus can be inclusive to pupils excluded from more traditional (and often written) activities. ^{(Adapted from Group Talk - Benefits for Science Teaching, section Why).}

Use of ICT

Can automate some sorts of feedback Use for collaborative work Engagement Clickers

The Typical Structure of Dialogue

A striking insight provided by classroom research is that much talk between teachers and their pupils has the following pattern: a teacher's question, a pupil's response, and then an evaluative comment by the teacher. This is described as an Initiation-Response-Feedback exchange, or IRF. Here's an example

I Teacher - What's the capital city of Argentina?

R Pupil - Buenos Aires

F Teacher - Yes, well done

This pattern was first pointed out in the 1970s by the British researchers Sinclair and Coulthard. Their original research was reported in

Sinclair, J. and Coulthard, M. (1975) Towards an Analysis of Discourse: the English used by Teachers and Pupils. London: Oxford University Press.

Sinclair and Coulthard's research has been the basis for extended debates about whether or not teachers should ask so many questions to which they already know the answer; and further debate about the range of uses and purposes of IRF in working classrooms. Despite all this, it seems that many teachers (even those who have qualified in recent decades) have not heard of it. Is this because their training did not include any examination of the structures of classroom talk – or because even if it did, the practical value of such an examination was not made clear?

A teacher's professional development (and, indeed, the development of members of any profession) should involve the gaining of critical insights into professional practice – to learn to see behind the ordinary, the taken for granted, and to question the effectiveness of what is normally done. Recognizing the inherent structure of teacher-pupil talk is a valuable step in that direction. Student teachers need to see how they almost inevitably converge on other teachers' style and generate the conventional patterns of classroom talk. By noting this, they can begin to consider what effects this has on pupil participation in class. There is nothing wrong with the use of IRFs by teachers, but question-and-answer routines can be used both productively and unproductively. By understanding and questioning what generally happens, students can begin to construct the kind of dialogues that they can feel confident have most educational value. ^{(Adapted from The Importance of Speaking and Listening, section IRF).}

The Importance of Identifying High Quality Talk

A main concern for assessment is to consider how well the talk suits the kind of event in which children are participating. Criteria are likely to be different, depending on whether they are talking in a group, making a presentation to the class, engaged in a drama-related activity, discussing ideas in citizenship, and so on. Helping any child improve their current competence requires some sort of assessment. Talk is difficult to assess because it is context dependent and ephemeral, but good opportunities for assessment occur regularly, especially in 'talk-focused' classrooms where both teacher and children are aware of the importance of speaking and listening for learning. This is the situation students need to be able to both recognise and create.

There are of course some aspects of evaluating children's talk where great sensitivity is needed. The ways people talk can be closely related to their identities, and student teachers may rightly worry about making evaluations of some aspects of a child's way of speaking such as their accent. Student teachers will need to appreciate the distinction between on the one hand using an assessment to help a child to become more involved in learning conversations, or to develop their presentation skills, and on the other trying to alter a child's accent or to ban the use of dialect in the classroom simply because it 'sounds wrong'. ^{(Adapted from The Importance of Speaking and Listening, section Assessment).}