Appendix A
How can we assist students to maintain a positive attitude towards learning and assessment, particularly those who repeatedly 'fail'?
The following quotes are transcribed from Geoff Master's presentation 'Towards a growth mindset in assessment'. They provide some great insight into this topic. "There sometimes has been a view in education that the way to build students’ self-confidence as learners is to give them tasks on which they are likely to succeed. So, if we want students to feel good about them selves, to have a positive self-view of themselves as learners, let’s make sure we give them things that will give them a success experience. The problem with this approach is that it often does several things. It often fails to challenge and extend students. It keeps them in their comfort zone, and we know now from a whole body of research, going back to Vygotsky, that if you want to maximise learning, you need to, whatever the nature of the learning, you need to give people challenges, stretch challenges, that are beyond their comfort zone in the region of zone of proximal development, as Vygotsky called it, where people can succeed, but often only if they have some kind of support in that process" "Starting from an assumption that every child is at some point in their learning, every child is capable of making progress if we can engage them, motivate them, and provide them with appropriate learning opportunities. They won’t all be at the same point in their learning at the same time, but we do expect that they will make progress over time, and we feed that back to them. We help them see the progress they’re making, we help them think about where they’re up to, because that’s one of the best ways. Giving students feedback that they’ve succeeded on easy tasks doesn’t do the job. The best way to build students’ self-efficacy as learners is to help them see how they’re succeeding on challenging tasks, help them to see how they are able to do things now that they weren’t able to do in the past, and to monitor the progress that they’re making. So by a growth mindset, Carol Dweck—and I’ve picked up her term—means focusing on the progress that students are making through particular learning domains, identifying where they’re at, tracking their progress, thinking about what will be challenging stretch targets, not just targets based on somebody’s view about what students should be learning this year in school but what are the appropriate stretch targets for this individual, given where they’re currently at in their learning." "Assessment is not about judging so much as understanding. Understanding where students are in their learning, in their long-term learning progress, and finding new ways—and this is a big challenge". |
To view the full transcript of Professor Geoff Masters' (Chief Executive Officer, Australian Council for Educational Research) presentation, 'Towards a growth mindset in assessment' at the 'Australian Curriculum: Aligning Learning Areas mini-conference', click on the provided link below.
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