Mirror, mirror: Reflecting diverse student experiences of assessment and learning back to teachers
There are so many ways students can be included as partners in improving learning and life at school. One way that isn’t often tried is to include the experiences of students in teachers’ professional learning.
As part of an initiative at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) called Improving Outcomes through Accessible Assessment and Inclusive Practice, researchers recently conducted interviews and focus groups with Year 10 students about their experiences of assessment-related classroom practices. We were aiming to support teachers to adapt their practices to be accessible to all students, so we first asked students who can find the cognitive, attentional and social demands of senior secondary English challenging: students with Developmental Language Disorder and/or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. With about four students in every classroom (Graham & Tancredi, 2019), students with language and attentional difficulties are the biggest neurodivergent group in secondary classrooms.Their insights about what helped them keep their learning on track and prepare them for assessment tasks provided us with valuable ideas for what to focus on in teacher professional learning.
After teachers tried out some things, like co-constructing success criteria with students and exploring exemplars in different ways (refer to Willis et al., 2023 for more information), we asked students with and without language and attentional difficulties what they noticed. In interviews and focus groups, teacher-selected artefacts of classroom practice prompted students to recall how they experienced the lesson. Students were positive and constructive about their teachers’ developing practice:
Shannon: “We do group work but we get the ideas as a group and then we split and do our own thing. Like we get an idea for a paragraph as a group and all of the evidence that we could use and how we can use it. And then we can write out our paragraph and stuff like that.
Interviewer: Is that something you've done much in English before?
Shannon: No, but it's really helpful. I think that's how I learn better.”
And then we did something that rarely happens: we positioned teachers as “learning from the student” (Pryor & Crossouard, 2008) by sharing what students said in reflective teacher interviews. In this process, teachers reflected on their intention for and own recollection of the lesson. Then they considered their students’ insights and how they might use that evidence to inform their future practice. We think student focus groups would be an authentic way for schools to develop students and teachers as partners in the learning process.
Tips for running focus groups about teacher practice
Provide students with concrete things to respond to. We asked teachers to give us a short video or image of their practice, to prompt students’ memories about the learning.
There is strength in diversity. The perspectives of neurodivergent students alongside their peers can help teachers see beyond what seems to be working for ‘most’ students.
Carefully plan your focus groups. Ideally, invite groups of 4-6 students for 30-45 minutes. Keep the momentum going with structured questions, open-ended questions, think-time, and visual aids.
Establish a conversation protocol and manage the interactions. Avoid talking too much facilitator talk and make sure everyone has the chance to have their say.
Afterwards, synthesise your data to re-present to teachers. Students will talk a lot and you don’t want to overwhelm teachers with information. For us, a combination of structured data in table form along with a selection of quotes about different themes worked well.
How teachers responded to seeing their students’ experiences of their practice
It can be challenging for teachers to make use of feedback from students. Our study showed some clear response patterns that can help schools get the most out of reflective interviews.
Teachers’ first reaction will probably be a personal one.
It’s natural to feel evaluated – criticised or affirmed. And it’s natural for teachers to be concerned about their students. In fact, the “cognitive irritant” (Woods, 2012, p. 152) of that moment of recognition or surprise is an important part of reflective thinking.
What happens next matters most for teachers making plans to adapt future practice.
Take Blake, for example. She was surprised her students stayed on track most often by ‘figuring it out for themselves’. She was concerned “Because in the end I think that's our job, isn't it? To help them?” but then she looked for evidence she could use to improve her practice. Her students noticed that she was not regularly sharing the intended learning for lessons and acknowledged that it’s “something that I’ve definitely got to become much more conscious about’. This cycle of inquiry, where teachers try new practice, include evidence of student experience, and respond by planning for future practice is a powerful cycle.
Where do teachers get stuck?
When teachers were less agile in their reflective thinking, there seemed to be two main barriers to considering adapting future practice: 1. Regarding student experience as fixed by focusing on contextual factors beyond the teacher’s control, like exam schedules, and 2. Focusing on individual or group learning and behaviour characteristics. It can be helpful to acknowledge barriers as legitimate concerns and be patient. Some of the best reflections happened when teachers had a little time to think. For example, Terry, who initially rejected students’ suggestion of more collaborative learning, reconsidered:
It’s highlighted that I should keep doing these practices because they are helpful to some students in areas where I'm like, ‘Oh, maybe I should do some more peer assessments.’ Because I do think in other classes they've worked well. I think sometimes I underestimate their ability to work together properly on task because they're a really chatty class.
When teachers considered evidence of student experience, they planned practical steps to adapt their future practices. Students provided compelling reasons to do things like offer more choice, integrate collaborative learning into lesson design, or just keep working on practices that are valued by students.
Funding and acknowledgement
This research was partially supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council‘s Linkage Projects funding scheme (LP180100830) and our industry partners. The author acknowledges that this manuscript draws on the wider project and thanks all team members, partners and participants for their contributions to this research.
Julie Arnold
Queensland University of Technology
Contact: j7.arnold@qut.edu.au
References
Graham, L. J., & Tancredi, H. (2019). In search of a middle ground: the dangers and affordances of diagnosis in relation to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and developmental language disorder. Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, 24(3), 287-300. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632752.2019.1609248
Pryor, J., & Crossouard, B. (2008). A socio-cultural theorisation of formative assessment. Oxford Review of Education, 34(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054980701476386
Willis, J., Arnold, J., & DeLuca, C. (2023a). Accessibility in assessment for learning: sharing criteria for success. Frontiers in education (Lausanne), 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1170454
Woods, J. (2012). Cognitive economics and the logic of abduction. The Review of Symbolic Logic, 5(1), 148-161. https://doi.org/10.1017/S175502031100027X