- Opinion
Curriculum change and the challenge of assessment backwash
Everything everywhere all at once
The impact of a period of unprecedented global turmoil appears more readily in some sectors than others. In education both the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic have driven significant, long term change. However perhaps the arrival of artificial intelligence at the consumer level, for example through Large Language Models (The release of GPT-4 is imminent), will have the most dramatic effect.
It is not surprising that we have seen policy makers around the world taking a close look at what needs to happen to the education curriculum. The OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 project has driven much of this thought and its influence is now being seen as governments release ever more radical and ambitious plans for curriculum overhaul.
The Scottish Experience
“Tell me how you will measure me, and then I will tell you how I will behave. If you measure me in an illogical way, don't complain about illogical behavior.”
Scotland made the bold decision to make substantial curriculum change over 10 years ago - in doing so it has given us a hugely valuable insight into the influence of assessment models at a national level over an extended period.
It's now over 20 years since the original 2002 consultation exercise - the 'National Debate on Education' - reviewed the state of school education in Scotland. The major outcome was the implementation of the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) in 2010-11 overseen by Education Scotland. It identified 4 key purposes of education; those that enable young people to become, "successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors.".
When it comes to assessment, what have we learnt?
Two recent reports from the Scottish Government and the Nuffield Foundation have provided an insight into current progress and ongoing challenges.
The Nuffield Foundation describes a fragmented, narrowing curriculum at odds with some of the core principles of the CfE. The role of assessment is identified as a key driver through its washback effect (something we have written about before). The report makes a number of recommendations around assessment, including the need to develop 'new approaches that are less likely to produce perverse incentives'.
The Scottish Government sets out a vision for assessment, namely 'An inclusive and highly regarded qualifications and assessment system that inspires learning, values the diverse achievements of every learner in Scotland and supports all learners into the next phase of their lives, socially, culturally and economically'.
Both reports recognise that the washback effect continues to be a significant challenge.
Empowerment through easily understood national standards
We have written before about the importance of sharing and securing learner's performance across schools, and how an 'on-demand' comparative approach could be key to unlocking what can seem to be an intractable problem.
How much simpler it would all be if teachers had – as a matter of normal practice – access to, and familiarity with, work from a national sample of schools, not just their own classroom?
The On-Demand Comparative approach puts the focus on teacher and learners at the chalkface by assuming that helping practitioners to better recognise standards is the key to breaking the washback problem. Core to this is helping practitioners to acquire the tacit knowledge of 'what good looks like' that they rely on through each day to understand the progress being made by learners.
Tacit knowledge or implicit knowledge—as opposed to formal, codified or explicit knowledge—is knowledge that is difficult to express or extract, and thus more difficult to transfer to others by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. This can include personal wisdom, experience, insight, and intuition (4).
Our experience working with organisations around the world is that an innovative approach like this can indeed encourage more authentic methods of assessment. In doing so it can break the washback effect and liberate the curriculum and pedagogical approaches. This in turn gives us a better chance of delivering the learning outcomes all our people need for a rapidly changing world.
Get in touch if you would like to know more.
References
- OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030
- Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment in Scotland: Interim Report (3 March 2023) - Scottish Government
- Choice, attainment and positive destinations (20 February 2023) - Nuffield Foundation
- Tacit Knowledge - Wikipedia