Evaluation of Learning in the English Schools of Québec

Evaluation of Learning in the English Schools of QuŽbec
SUMMARY

Evaluation of Learning in the English Schools of Québec

Report to the Minister of Education
September 1997

In November 1997, the Advisory Board on English Education published its report entitled Evaluation of Learning in the English Schools of Québec. Report to the Minister of Education, September 1997, (72-5011A).

The Advisory Board decided in September 1996 to examine evaluation of learning under five headings:

What values guide our evaluation of learning?

How are we evaluating learning?

When do we evaluate learning?

Why are we evaluating learning?

For whom are we reporting on evaluation of learning?

The report of the Advisory Board

reviews existing regulatory guidelines for evaluating learning

publishes the results of a survey of students, parents and educators

The Advisory Board on English Education conducted a survey of students, parents and educators on the topic of the Evaluation of Learning. This data report, Evaluation of Learning Student, Parent and Educator Questionnaires Quantitative Analysis of Results Final Report, contains tables which summarize the responses to the three questionnaires. The methodology is also described. The Advisory Board report entitled Evaluation of Learning in the English Schools of Québec. Report to the Minister of Education, September 1997 (72-5011A), examines the implications of these results and includes a copy of the data report and a sample of the Educator Questionnaire.

makes 22 recommendations to the Minister of Education

Guidelines

The report bases its analysis of the evaluation of learning on certain guidelines

justice and intellectual rigour

teacher responsibility for student assessment and evaluation

school board obligation to establish standards and procedures for evaluation

the Basic School Regulation which defines evaluation and the rules for certification

Attitudes and perceptions of parents, educators and students

This Advisory Board report publishes the details of a survey of more than 8 000 persons in the English community.

2 535 persons responded to the five part, 88 item questionnaires.

Some extracts of the responses:

Advisory Board recommendations to the Minister

Recommendations Regarding Justice and Intellectual Rigour:

1. Increase communication around assessment results. Integrate assessment results into school work and feed them back into the teaching and learning process rather than treating the results as an undiscussed message to student and parent.

2. Place more emphasis on students knowing what they have learned. Provide as many opportunities as possible to show what students have learned and how to use it. Promote the use of a multiplicity of assessment vehicles with a rear-view mirror dimension, such as journals, student-teacher conferences, self- and peer-evaluation.

3. Intersperse assessment of what a student can do with more traditional evaluation of what he or she has done. Teaching a student how to learn and how to use the results of assessments are keys to students eventually acquiring knowledge and strategies for life-long learning.

4. Schools should experiment with the use of time and scheduling with a view to optimizing student and teacher use of time for aligning teaching, learning and evaluation. Evaluation is a change driver. Give it the resources and time necessary.

Recommendations Regarding Teaching:

5. Establish uniform criteria for quality assessment and evaluation with a common focus on student needs.

6. Provide elementary school teachers opportunities to work among themselves on a school-wide assessment strategy whose criteria they can all understand and accept.

7. Provide secondary school teachers with a framework beyond the table of specifications and definition of domain for relating their evaluation practices to those practised by their colleagues. This framework should be built with a view to meeting common pedagogical objectives and providing their common pool of students with a consistent approach to the requirements of school work.

8. Ensure education and support for teachers to understand parents as partners. Rather than reacting to parents as one more hurdle to get over, draw parents into the teaching, learning, evaluation cycle to play a significant role in giving assessment and evaluation a promotional dimension.

9. Include the student in parent-teacher interviews. Students and parents would receive the same information and perhaps the process would be more transparent and more relevant to all three participants.

10. Challenge teachers to take a leading role in linking evaluation to learning in the interests of the advancement of learning rather than simply its assessment. Teachers are the best placed to chart learning paths.

11. Introduce more "active learning." Open the door wider to active learning by student self-assessment and by group self-evaluation.

Recommendations Regarding Standards and Monitoring Local Assessment Practices:

12. School boards should encourage the team approach to assessment and evaluation in their schools.

13. Provide the time and appropriate budget allocations for inservice training for teachers in a variety of assessment methods, standard-setting, and the use of the results in reporting to students and parents.

14. Explore the consortium approach to renewing assessment and evaluation practices, including school boards, universities and teacher associations, with a view to narrowing the gap between theory and practice. These sessions can pool resources, draw on cross disciplinary skills and explore docimology and applications in different subjects. Some longitudinal information is needed to examine the long term impact of certain assessment practices. The MEQ can cooperate with universities and teachers in such research work.

15. Simplify report cards so that they are effective communications instruments agreed upon by the local school team. Report cards suffer from much criticism: elementary school reports are considered too complicated for easy communication with parents and secondary school reports provide too little space for saying anything worthwhile.

Recommendations Regarding Certification and the Legal and Regulatory Context of Evaluation:

16. Clearly state standards of what is to be taught and what kind of performance is to be expected and how the standards are to be evaluated. This may include exit profiles, profiles of learning by levels along the way and a declaration of the pedagogical or social reasons underlying the make-up of the core curriculum.

17.
Reinforce student progress by a consolidated series of measures. The Task Force on Curriculum pointed to actions that reinforce student progress:

take stock with periodic assessments which are followed by remediation and not by grade repetition;
curtail the use of multiple-choice testing;
build a school-wide dedication to the quality of the language of instruction.

18. Reform the building of uniform exams and the conditions under which they are interpreted and reported. Shift the emphasis to active learning; assess multiple sources of evidence; monitor progress to promote growth; evaluate achievement to recognize accomplishment. "Students deserve a curriculum that develops their mathematical power and an assessment system that enables them to show that power." (See Endnote No 27).

19. Program revision should be done with evaluation in mind. In particular, tables of specifications must be adjusted to take into account a wider range of teaching and learning activities and assessment methods which will allow for a deeper and broader range of performance by students.

20. The framework proposed by the program of studies should be adapted more realistically to the rhythm of learning, not only in one grade, but from grade to grade and cycle to cycle.

21. Build an evaluation culture in schools by aligning program objectives, classroom organization and inter-level, interprogram teaching strategies with exit profiles and certification.

22.
Re-define assessment and evaluation by taking into account such criteria as:

placing assessment and evaluation in the context of school indicators and school improvement
setting standards for assessment and evaluation by more clearly defining the reasons for evaluating student learning. Clarify what use is to be made of the information obtained in the assessment
supporting professional associations in educational measurement and evaluation and program evaluation in order to promote an interdisciplinary vision of evaluation
exploring the contribution information technology can make to assessment and evaluation

Conclusion

To the assessment devices teachers construct themselves must be added the skills to interpret the results of evaluation procedures constructed by others (school boards, ministry)

Students' awareness that they will be tested must be informed by the purpose to which the assessment will be put.

It appears to us that much of the effectiveness of evaluation is lost in the isolation in which all this is practised.

As Benjamin Levin says: "...we need to look at ways of increasing attention schools pay to their environment and activities, generating more analysis and discussion of what the school is doing."

The Board report concluded by noting that in the current restructuring of the school system, a school's evaluation culture and practice should be given a high priority.

This report is available on the Advisory Board Internet site (http://www.mels.gouv.qc.ca). Requests for further information may be made to the Advisory Board at this address:

Jim Cullen
Secretary
Advisory Board on English Education
600 Fullum, 9th Floor
Montréal, Québec H2K 4L1
Telephone: (514) 873-5656
Fax: (514) 864-4181
E-Mail: cela-abee@mels.gouv.qc.ca

	*What values guide our evaluation of learning?*
	*How are we evaluating learning?*
	*When do we evaluate learning?*
	*Why are we evaluating learning?*
	*For whom are we reporting on evaluation of learning?*

	justice and intellectual rigour
	teacher responsibility for student assessment and evaluation
	school board obligation to establish standards and procedures for evaluation
	the Basic School Regulation which defines evaluation and the rules for certification

1.	Increase communication around assessment results. Integrate assessment results into school work and feed them back into the teaching and learning process rather than treating the results as an undiscussed message to student and parent.
2.	Place more emphasis on students knowing what they have learned. Provide as many opportunities as possible to show what students have learned and how to use it. Promote the use of a multiplicity of assessment vehicles with a rear-view mirror dimension, such as journals, student-teacher conferences, self- and peer-evaluation.
3.	Intersperse assessment of what a student can do with more traditional evaluation of what he or she has done. Teaching a student how to learn and how to use the results of assessments are keys to students eventually acquiring knowledge and strategies for life-long learning.
4.	Schools should experiment with the use of time and scheduling with a view to optimizing student and teacher use of time for aligning teaching, learning and evaluation. Evaluation is a change driver. Give it the resources and time necessary.

5.	Establish uniform criteria for quality assessment and evaluation with a common focus on student needs.
6.	Provide elementary school teachers opportunities to work among themselves on a school-wide assessment strategy whose criteria they can all understand and accept.
7.	Provide secondary school teachers with a framework beyond the table of specifications and definition of domain for relating their evaluation practices to those practised by their colleagues. This framework should be built with a view to meeting common pedagogical objectives and providing their common pool of students with a consistent approach to the requirements of school work.
8.	Ensure education and support for teachers to understand parents as partners. Rather than reacting to parents as one more hurdle to get over, draw parents into the teaching, learning, evaluation cycle to play a significant role in giving assessment and evaluation a promotional dimension.
9.	Include the student in parent-teacher interviews. Students and parents would receive the same information and perhaps the process would be more transparent and more relevant to all three participants.
10.	Challenge teachers to take a leading role in linking evaluation to learning in the interests of the advancement of learning rather than simply its assessment. Teachers are the best placed to chart learning paths.
11.	Introduce more "active learning." Open the door wider to active learning by student self-assessment and by group self-evaluation.

12.	School boards should encourage the team approach to assessment and evaluation in their schools.
13.	Provide the time and appropriate budget allocations for inservice training for teachers in a variety of assessment methods, standard-setting, and the use of the results in reporting to students and parents.
14.	Explore the consortium approach to renewing assessment and evaluation practices, including school boards, universities and teacher associations, with a view to narrowing the gap between theory and practice. These sessions can pool resources, draw on cross disciplinary skills and explore docimology and applications in different subjects. Some longitudinal information is needed to examine the long term impact of certain assessment practices. The MEQ can cooperate with universities and teachers in such research work.
15.	Simplify report cards so that they are effective communications instruments agreed upon by the local school team. Report cards suffer from much criticism: elementary school reports are considered too complicated for easy communication with parents and secondary school reports provide too little space for saying anything worthwhile.

16.	Clearly state standards of what is to be taught and what kind of performance is to be expected and how the standards are to be evaluated. This may include exit profiles, profiles of learning by levels along the way and a declaration of the pedagogical or social reasons underlying the make-up of the core curriculum.
17.	Reinforce student progress by a consolidated series of measures. The Task Force on Curriculum pointed to actions that reinforce student progress: take stock with periodic assessments which are followed by remediation and not by grade repetition; curtail the use of multiple-choice testing; build a school-wide dedication to the quality of the language of instruction.
18.	Reform the building of uniform exams and the conditions under which they are interpreted and reported. Shift the emphasis to active learning; assess multiple sources of evidence; monitor progress to promote growth; evaluate achievement to recognize accomplishment. "Students deserve a curriculum that develops their mathematical power and an assessment system that enables them to show that power." (See Endnote No 27).
19.	Program revision should be done with evaluation in mind. In particular, tables of specifications must be adjusted to take into account a wider range of teaching and learning activities and assessment methods which will allow for a deeper and broader range of performance by students.
20.	The framework proposed by the program of studies should be adapted more realistically to the rhythm of learning, not only in one grade, but from grade to grade and cycle to cycle.
21.	Build an evaluation culture in schools by aligning program objectives, classroom organization and inter-level, interprogram teaching strategies with exit profiles and certification.
22.	Re-define assessment and evaluation by taking into account such criteria as: placing assessment and evaluation in the context of school indicators and school improvement setting standards for assessment and evaluation by more clearly defining the reasons for evaluating student learning. Clarify what use is to be made of the information obtained in the assessment supporting professional associations in educational measurement and evaluation and program evaluation in order to promote an interdisciplinary vision of evaluation exploring the contribution information technology can make to assessment and evaluation