Thoughts on assessing without levels

1. Tackling
the myth of
progress
David Didau
The Key – Life After Levels
19th May 2015

2. We can’t see when we’re wrong

3. We can’t see when we’re wrong

4. If it looks like a duck…

5. What is progress?
1. Forward or onward movement
towards a destination: “the darkness
did not stop my progress”.
2. Development towards an improved
or more advanced condition: “we
are making progress towards equal
rights”.

6. What is progress?
• Is it inevitable?
• Can it be both rapid and sustained?
• How can you measure learning?

7. Two definitions of learning:
1. The long-term retention and transfer
of knowledge and skills
2. A change in how the world is
understood.

8. Performance
Learning

9. Warsaw

10. We believe “engaging in learning activities…transfers the
content of the activity to the mind of the student…”
But “as learning occurs, so does forgetting…”
“learning takes time and is not
encapsulated in the visible here-and-now
of classroom activities.”
Graham Nuthall (2005)
The input/output myth

11. What we think
progress looks like

12. What it actually
looks like

13. Or maybe...?
Not
knowing
Knowing

14. Threshold concepts
• Integrative
• Transformative
• Irreversible
• Reconstitutive
• Troublesome
• Discursive
Meyer & land 2010

15. Threshold concepts in English
• Understanding the relationship between grammar and
meaning
• Understanding the effect of context, both on writers and
readers
• Understanding the need to use supporting evidence for ideas
• An awareness of the ways in which language can affect
readers
• Understanding how the structure of a text can produce
different effects and meanings
• Understanding that texts can be subjected to analysis to
reveal a variety meanings.

19. Overlapping waves theory
3 assumptions:
1. At any one time children think in a variety of ways
about most phenomena;
2. These varied ways of thinking compete with each
other, not just during brief transition periods but
rather over prolonged periods of time;
3. Cognitive development involves gradual changes in
the frequency of these ways of thinking, as well as
the introduction of more advanced ways of thinking.

20. @LearningSpy
learningspy.co.uk
ddidau@gmail.com

21. Reading
• Nuthall (2005).The cultural myths and realities of classroom
teaching and learning: A personal journey. Teachers College
Record
• Siegler (1998) Emerging Minds: The Process of Change in
Children's Thinking
• Meyer & Land (2010) Threshold Concepts and
Transformational Learning
• From my blog:
– The Myth of Progress
– Assessing what we value