Assessing Differently

Assessment will always be a vexed success through re-sits - a science in Building on TH115, the teachers
question because it embodies so itself. A new genre of discourse has writing in this edition go in several
many different purposes. Assessment evolved - a purely strategic discourse new directions. Some work within
structures and systems exist to help that informs all transaction. And we existing structures; some draw upon
pupils to get better, to help teachers see senior management praising this: principles of current curricula but
to help pupils to get better, to if Levels are discussed in lessons, that ignore their structures; others offer
motivate pupils with goals, to place must be good. Most disturbingly we radical challenges to both. Widely
pupils' performance in the context see the art of the possible transformed diverse in their practical examples
of national performance, to inform into the practice of exclusion: 'All and arguments, what these authors
pupils about their own learning, to predictions show that you won't have in common is a determination
ensure that teachers are doing their achieve in history, so we won't let you to create and debate fresh ways of
job, to help teachers assess their try, Jonathan. After all, "history" is helping more pupils to achieve more
own effectiveness, to help teachers defined by a set of precise ladders and within history. Rachel Foster finds
diagnose their own weaknesses, increments, and you're not showing a way of accessing Year 9 pupils'
to help teachers diagnose pupils' any signs of ascending them. Let us thinking about change and continuity.
weaknesses, to assess the effectiveness help you up another ladder, one where Katie Hall sings the praises of the OCR
of schools, to maintain or define you can see yourself achieving and GCSE pilot, not only for innovative
notions of high standards, to assess take control of your own progress. We and flexible assessment methods but
the effectiveness of a curriculum, to will guide you in taking subjects where also for securing better progression
guide employers, to define the goals it is clear, from the data we have on from conceptual and extended
of a curriculum. Sadly, there are people your rate of progress, that you can work at Key Stage 3. Giles Fullard
who imagine that all these things are succeed.' The rhetoric of autonomy and Kate Dacey similarly balance
compatible, when they are not. has come to clothe a labelling innovation in the 'what' and the
machine. 'how' of assessment. They transform
These tensions are at the root of the 'what' by integrating evidential
a disturbing and revealing story It is all the more remarkable and thinking and causal reasoning and
- the strange story of Assessment heartening, then, that in the midst the 'how' by doing it all orally. Oliver
for Learning (AfL). Here was an of these constraints, the creativity Knight explores theoretical questions
approach designed to involve pupils, and determination of history teachers within AfL, offering radical solutions
to transform pupils' attitudes, to put seems undimmed. Wherever we look, together witb early practical efforts at
learning first and assessment second, history teachers continue to pursue building learner autonomy in his own
to build new openness into teachers' the goals of defining and debating classroom. Joanne Philpott considers
transactions with pupils, to enable the nature of true quality in historical fitting goals for pupils witb literacy
and nurture progress in constructive learning, of looking at and listening and learning difficulties in Year 9. She
and transparent ways, to privilege to pupils to try to establish gold offers a provocative challenge to a
praise and encouragement over standards (old and new), of learning system that labels pupils as 'not very
deficit and blame. Marvellous things to support pupils in new ways in good at history' at age 14, suggesting
have been done in the name of AfL, order to strengthen both the rigour that these pupils' historical learning is
but in becoming the handmaiden of and the enjoyment of their practice nch in wider educative value. Jacques
other agendas it has undergone a of history, tn 2004, our Assessment Haenen and Hanneke Tuithof share
strange perversion. We see curricula Without Levels Edition (THI15) a radical textbook design, one that
transformed into hierarchies of tiny contained a series of contrasting builds 'cooperative learning' into its
increments and stages, filigreed practical alternatives to the abuse goals and structures, lain Annat and
ladders that pupils must ascend and of Level Descriptions. Some authors Katherine Bone are not writing about
know they are ascending, regardless were at pains to show that they assessment but their inspiring account
of whether these reflect the depth, were certainly not anti-data, far from of integrating history and geography
complexity or richness of the discipline, it, but rather that the data needed through landscape invites further
and how pupils might learn within it. to be valid, rigorous, worthwhile, reflection on what we judge valuable
We see the abuse of Level Descriptions reflecting the complexity of history in pupils' learning and how our
for this purpose, the problems and and historical learning. Each teacher assessment structures might nurture it.
solutions concerning which were shared different ways of defining
explored in Teaching History 115, and nurturing historical achievement,
Assessment Without Levels Edition. through systematic assessment. This
We see the idea of assessment was a true 'standards raising' edition Christine Counsell
embedded within teaching and in its ambitious goals for pupils and Mary Woolley
learning, surely sensible at first sight, teachers, rather than in the sense of Arthur Chapman
turning into an assessment discourse trying to cultivate ever more atomised Tony McConnell
that drives the lesson. Those of us who increments of performance evidence. Editors
spend many hours in other people's
classrooms have lost count of the times
where we suddenly realise that the
lesson is no longer about an aspect of
historical thinking or an exploration of
historical knowledge, it is a lesson on
levels, sub-levels, or levels of response
markschemes, or, at A Level, tactical
games to be played in optimising

ching History 131 June 2008 The Historical Association