Education for a better world

By Lindy Braithwaite – Assistant Principal, Curriculum

As an economist of sorts (an economics major from long, long ago), I admit, this clickbait got my attention.

Teaching collaborative problem solving, tick, yes, we’re doing that, …$2.54 trillion, really? I was relieved on reading the attached report, that it was as much about social capital as it was about the trillions. The report, “Catalysing Education 4.0 - Investing in the Future of Learning for a Human-Centric Recovery”, released this month from the World Economic Forum, builds on their work from their ‘21^st Century skills’ and others, like the OECD ‘Learning Compass 2030’ and UNESCO ‘Transversal Competencies’.

It is just one in a series of recent reports, globally and locally, that puts education at the centre of recovery in a post-pandemic world, and lays out a framework of curriculum and experiences that seek to build skills and attributes in young people for a better world. Arguably, the winds of change, to a shift of focus in education to skills, were already there, but the call to action has intensified.

Locally, the Mitchell Institute of Victoria University, Melbourne, also released a report last month: “Reinvigorating and reimagining our schools - A vision for post-pandemic schooling in Australia”. There is a lot of synergy in these two new reports.

While they both initially focus on what and why building skills, such as collaboration, creative thinking and the like is necessary, they also importantly provide insight into how to achieve this.

We know that this is about curriculum and experiences that children are exposed to – something we are committed to; for example, next week Year 9 will embark on the Worn Soles program. But what is really interesting is that the reports go further to challenge past understandings in the area of assessment.

Why assessment is part of the story
Firstly, these latest reports argue that the purpose of assessment must broaden further than a summative mark on a report. We knew that – our understanding at Radford of the purpose of assessment can be described as:

• Assessment of learning measures students’ knowledge and skill in a learning domain, often against standardised scales, outcomes, or benchmarks.
• Assessment for learning provides ‘point-in-time’ information to guide teachers’ instructional strategies and give feedback to students on their progress.
• Assessment as learning occurs when students take responsibility for the assessment process, so the process itself helps to develop their agency and learning (edited extract, NESA, 2019).

But these reports argue that assessment should now go further to use “novel methods to assess a broader range of skills” and create “generative feedback loops” (Jackson, J. et al. 2022). That assessment should “be viewed as an integral part of good pedagogy, rather than something that gets tacked on at the end of the teaching cycle.” (Kaushik, A, 2021) The takeaway is that assessment, rather than being high stakes and perhaps feared, should be embraced as a mechanism to provide feedback to students and teachers on learning, so that the next steps can be planned. Assessment should also seek to measure and develop other competencies, such as collaboration.

“Realising the generative potential of assessment in Australian education will involve changing what is assessed, why assessment happens, and how it is done.” (Jackson, J. et al. 2022)

The second proposition on assessment is that it must enable the student to partner in their learning. This can be done through self-assessment and reflection, peer-assessment, and qualitative assessment. In learning how to learn, reflecting and developing their interpersonal skills, their capacity to meet the challenges of the future is increased. This extract is an interesting reframing of assessment from the student perspective:

What gets measured, matters
So, in using the mantra “what gets measured, matters” you will notice changes in our communication on assessment. Our Learning Summary (the new-look end-of-semester report) will prominently feature Approaches to Learning. These ‘Approaches to Learning’ (adapted from the ACARA General Capabilities) have four areas and strongly correlate with the skills in the aforementioned reports:

• Self-Regulation:
  • Demonstrates self-discipline and sets goals;
  • Expresses emotions appropriately.
    
    
• Social Management:
  • Works collaboratively;
  • Appreciates diverse perspectives and contributes to civil society.

Students have and will continue to have the opportunity to self-assess their development on these skills, using evidence-based descriptions that are written for growth and progression, rather than deficit models. In this first semester, we will only be giving feedback on ‘Self-Regulation: Demonstrates self-discipline and sets goals’, but will roll out other indicators in the near future.

As parents and caregivers, you have access to individual Approaches to Learning descriptions on your child’s Grades page on Nexus. You are invited to work with your child to support their development, through goal-setting and encouraging them to take ownership of their approaches to learning. Likewise, students will be asked during the semester to self-assess and reflect on their learning for at least one assessment task in each of their subjects, with a view to set goals and be proactive. We ask you to help us to support them to be the masters of their journey.

Please see the Nexus post and its embedded links for further information about the Learning Summary.

Farewell

It would be remiss of me not to take the opportunity in this space to say a sad farewell to Dr Adrian Johnson, who has been a fabulous Head of Secondary School and an admired and esteemed leader, teacher and colleague. You will be missed, Dr Johnson!

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Jackson, J., Matthews, H., Ryan, J., Macklin, S. and Brown, C. 2022. Reinvigorating and reimagining our schools. Mitchell Institute, Victoria University. Melbourne. Available at: <https://www.vu.edu.au/sites/default/files/reinvigorating-reimagining-school-education.pdf> [Accessed 13 June 2022].

Kaushik, A., “Improving Learning: Reconsidering Student Assessment Globally”, in Powering a Learning Society During the Age of Disruption, edited by S. Ra, S. Jagannathan and R. McLean, Asian Development Bank (ADB), 2021, Available at: <https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/704196/powering-learning-society-during-age-disruption.pdf>

World Economic Forum, 2022. Catalysing Education 4.0: Investing in the Future of Learning for a Human-Centric Recovery. Insight Report. [online] Cologny/Geneva: World Economic Forum. Available at: <https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Catalysing_Education_4.0_2022.pdf> [Accessed 13 June 2022].