Professional learning: Models
Teacher initiative
In this model, individual teachers focus on their own initiatives.
They can reflect on, select, and trial strategies to ensure that
assessment is relevant to teaching and learning.
Changing teaching practice involves:
- teacher initiative;
- identifying teacher actions and strategies;
- trialling strategies with students;
- self-reflection and analysis;
- seeking feedback and evaluation from peers and students;
- evaluating and perfecting teaching strategies.
Theoretical context
Such initiatives may derive from a paradigm that contains both the
role of the curriculum in determining content, and the role of the
learner in terms of their own thinking processes and learning needs.
The paradigm is described by Torrance and Pryor (1998) and is designed
to encourage teachers and learners to think about how well-structured
learning activities can have a positive formative impact. It is
based on the premise that learning activities should help students
to learn. This means that both the content of the curriculum and
the needs of learners are addressed.
Torrance and Pryor suggest a framework based on convergent and
divergent practices.
Convergent practice ascertains whether the learner knows
or understands a predetermined thing. It is based on "can do" statements,
checklists, and prescriptive tasks, and compares errors with correct
responses. It is judgmental, quantitative evaluation and involves
the student as recipient. Learning activities are a repeated series
of summative assessment tasks and are considered less formative
for learning. The intention is to teach or assess the next predetermined
thing in a linear progression.
Divergent practice is flexible, and incorporates alternatives.
It offers open forms of recording, and an analysis based on open
questions and tasks. The focus is on miscues and misconceptions, on gaining
insights into students' understanding, and on prompting their metacognition.
It is descriptive rather than purely judgmental,
and involves the student as the initiator of assessments as well
as the recipient. Hence, learning is interactive and engages the
student in their own learning processes.
Torrance and Pryor suggest that moving from one paradigm to another
in a principled way will enhance the impact of learning and assessment
tasks. This model takes into account all aspects of teaching and learning.
Teachers can plan a range of assessment activities using convergent
and divergent practice, and the development of student metacognition.
This can include:
- students developing their own goals;
- improving student/teacher response time;
- giving students quality feedback;
- students discussing outcomes and discussing/designing
achievement criteria;
- student-designed assessment tasks;
- peer-assessment strategies;
- student-led assessment;
- using students' work to discuss expectations.
Reference
Torrance, H. and Pryor, J. (1998). Investigating Formative Assessment:
Teaching, Learning and Assessment in the Classroom. Buckingham:
Open University Press.
 Print
version of this model, (PDF, 30kb)
Back to list of Professional learning models | Back to top
|
