Black, Paul; Harrison, Chris; Lee, Clare; Marshall, Bethan; & Wiliam, Dylan. (2003). Assessment for Learning: Putting it into Practice. Reviewed by Julie R. O'Brian

Black, Paul; Harrison, Chris; Lee, Clare; Marshall, Bethan; & Wiliam, Dylan. (2003). Assessment for Learning: Putting it into Practice. New York: Open University Press. 144 pp. ISBN 0335212972 Reviewed by Julie R. O'Brian University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center September 14, 2006 Interest is growing in re-thinking the role of assessment at the classroom level. Given the current national focus on using the results of large-scale, externally administered assessments as the main ingredient in school and district accountability, it is not surprising that many teachers have been treating classroom assessment like miniature versions of the large-scale accountability assessments. In particular, teachers frequently focus their use of classroom assessment on evaluating student performance for the purpose of assigning grades just as the large-scale external assessments are used to assign grades to schools. However, this is not the only way that classroom assessments could be used. Internationally, and more recently in the US, researchers and practitioners have been investigating and advocating that classroom assessment be refocused on informing and supporting learning. Much of the current interest in formative uses of classroom assessment harkens back to the findings of a meta-analysis and research review by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam published in 1998. In that review, Black and Wiliam found mean effect sizes of 0.4 to 0.7 on student performance on externally administered outcome assessments when teachers used classroom assessment formatively. In several of the studies included in the review, these gains were greatest for the lowest-performing students. Black and Wiliam also found that the formative assessment practices that generated these gains were not common among educators. This latter finding set the stage for the book that is the focus of this review. Building on the results of the 1998 research review, the authors of Assessment for Learning set out to study “how formative assessment could be incorporated more effectively into professional practice” (p.17). They argue that the evidence that formative assessment practices improve student learning is strong enough that intentional efforts to increase these practices among teachers is warranted. Assessment for Learning reports on a two-year study involving more than 30 teachers from two local education agencies in the United Kingdom and researchers from Kings College (also in the UK) who worked together to take the research on formative assessment and put it into the practice of educators within real schools. This book was of particular interest to me because I direct a 50 district project in Colorado, focused on helping educators make more effective use of information to improve student learning and instructional practice. Formative uses of assessment at the classroom level have been one of the foci of my project. Although I have read the book multiple times, I still find new insights every time I open it. I now require all of the staff development staff within the project I direct to read it. Although the teachers and the researchers involved in the study were in the United Kingdom, the teacher experiences and classroom descriptions included in this book could just as well be from any school in the US. Aside from some UK specific terminology, for example the use of the term marks instead of grades, and INSETS instead of in-service training, this book has immediate applicability to US classrooms. While it is reportedly written for an educator audience, several features of this book make it invaluable for a staff development and educational research audience as well. The research audience will appreciate the authors’ clear theoretical stance and explicit and intentional effort to build on foundational research. The authors’ use of teacher and student voices to describe changes in practice and their bulleted lists of recommendations for action growing directly out of the teachers’ experiences will quickly hook staff developers. Finally, the authors’ reasonable claims about the study (in terms of ability to generalize the results) and their critique of its research value will appeal to educational researchers. This book manages to provide something for several different audiences without being too general to be useful to any specific audience. Below, these strengths are elaborated and a mild critique is provided of the one place the book may be less relevant to US audiences – the authors’ recommendations to local education agencies about how to support formative uses of classroom assessment. Theoretical Stance Black et al.(2002) take an intentional constructivist and socio-cultural perspective both in the professional learning experiences they provided to educators and in their writing about the results of their study. With this work, the authors don’t claim that formative assessment is the new, silver-bullet solution to improving schools. Rather, as Black et al. put it, “. . . formative assessment provides ways for teachers to create classrooms that are more consistent with the research on learning,” (p.79). With this study they don’t claim to use an innovative approach to staff development, they just use one that is actually consistent with the theoretical position they have taken, which is relatively rare. The work of the Kings College research team included both on-site visits to the classrooms of participating educators and on-site training sessions with all of the educators participating in the study. The classroom visits included the researchers making observations for the study and some coaching sessions with individual educators. Black et al. brought teachers together for learning experiences twelve times during the term of the study. The focus of the first three of these sessions was to expose the participating K-12 educators to research about formative assessment and support their development of their own action plans for implementing formative assessment in their classrooms. Consistent with a constructivist approach to learning, the participating educators were the ones who choose which practices to try-out and how to integrate these new practices into their classroom context. The book reports on which practices teachers used and their rationale. The next four sessions were held after the participating educators had begun implementing their plans. These sessions focused on educator-to-educator sharing about their experiences, fine-tuning practices and revising and improving the action plans. These sessions were intentionally constructed to be consistent with theories about the importance of discourse in learning, a Vogotskyian idea (Black et al., 2002). During this time, the participating teachers took more control of the sessions, requesting the information or support they needed from the research team. For example, the participants decided they needed more background on learning theories and asked the Kings College team to provide this information. During the final year, additional sessions were held to induct more teachers into the effort. This process helped the existing participants step back from their own experience and in a meta-cognitive sense analyze their learning process so they could design the most effective process for bringing new teachers within their schools into the effort. The way the researchers went about learning from this study and reporting on the study was also consistent with constructivist learning theories. Although the authors provide a brief overview of the foundational research upon which this study was based at the beginning of the book, the rest of the book is very inductive in how it presents the results of the study. The authors move from the description of the experiences of various teachers with different practices to identifying themes that cut across these different examples. Next they draw out implications for other teachers who may be interested in making similar changes and consider the context within which teachers change their practices including the role of local education agencies and other educational support organizations. The authors close with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of their work as research and the implications for both future research and having an impact on classroom practice. Even the structure of the book is consistent with their theoretical stance. Four Formative Practices Assessment for Learning: Putting it into Practice describes four formative assessment practices in some detail, including: questioning, feedback through marking, peer-and self-assessment by students, and formative uses of summative tests. That these four were not the same practices that were highlighted in the 1998 Black and Wiliam review is a testament to the powerful role that the participants in this study played in constructing the practices that became the focus of the study. Formative uses of summative tests, was not included in the earlier Black and Wiliam review. The four practices included in this book, however, are those that connect most readily with their intended audience, currently practicing educators. For each of the four formative practices, the authors start by providing a brief description of the research that they introduced that had the greatest influence on the study participants’ choices about which practice to try in their classrooms. This gives the reader a taste of what the educators in the study might have experienced. Next, the authors offer description of the participating educators’ experiences as they innovated, making changes to their practice based on this research. The description is rich and includes vignettes from classrooms, actual dialogue between teachers and students, teacher-written reflections and narrative description from the researchers’ perspective. All of these different types of description paint a vivid picture of what really changed for these teachers, whether they were using questioning differently than they had before, providing descriptive feedback rather than grades on assignments, or facilitating their students’ evaluation of their classmates work. Many of the most profound changes in the participating teachers’ practices were subtle, making it difficult to describe in a way that captures the reader’s attention. However, by using several different narrative tools to describe the practice changes, Black et al. not only capture the reader’s attention, they also effectively illustrated what was the core change that was common across all of the different formative strategies the participating teachers implemented – the locus of control for the learning shifted from the teacher to the students. For each of the four formative assessment practices that the are described, a bulleted list of recommendations for future action, drawn specifically from the teacher’s experiences, is also provided. At this point the authors make some reference to other research that would also support these recommendations, but they claim no greater authority than the experiences of these teachers themselves as the basis for the recommendations. The recommendations have several applications – for teachers to take directly into their practice, for staff developers to include in learning experiences they provide to teachers, and for researchers to consider as the focus of future study. For example, one of their recommendations about providing feedback is that “comments should identify what has been done well and what still needs improvement, and give guidance on how to make that improvement,” (Black et al., 2002, p. 48). This recommendation provides clear direction for a teacher in determining what kind of feedback to provide to her students. This statement also provides a clear enough definition of the kind of feedback advocated by Black et al., that it could be the focus of additional research. For example, different examples of teacher feedback could be analyzed to determine if the feedback met the Black et al. criteria. Then the impact on students of this kind of feedback versus other kinds of feedback (e.g. feedback that was primarily rewarding/punishing or just evaluative) could be compared. This section of the book that describes and analyzes the four practices is a gold mine for anyone interested in taking these practices into their classroom or helping others to do so. It is also a great starting place to define practices deserving of additional research. Recommendations for Local Education Agencies Although it is the weakest section of the book, the recommendations the authors make regarding how local education agencies and other educational support entities should help manage and support teachers in implementing formative assessment practices still has some valuable practical advice. This is the only section where it seems like the authors are writing from a lack of expertise and limited experience. They also make some pretty specific assumptions about the structure of local education agencies and their relationship with schools that may not be valid for many local education agencies within the US. For example, they assume that local education agencies have much greater authority over the details of educator practice than is common within many school districts within the US. Research Value Black et al. provide an analysis of the research value of this work that helps to illuminate the intent behind their study and suggests a variety of future research opportunities. The authors recognize that a study such as this one which selects participants based on interest and the support of the local education agency leadership will not generalize to a wide variety of educational contexts. However, they argue that this participant selection strategy was more appropriate for creating a context where they could study how teachers innovate in their practice when supports are provided for them to do so. The authors also acknowledge that this study did more to set the stage for additional research than to provide definitive evidence about the success of a specific intervention, which was their intention. Although their study provided additional evidence of a relationship between formative assessment practices and improvements in student achievement as measured by outcome assessments, this was not a major focus of their research. In fact, the authors note that it the request of their funding agency which prompted them to collect and report on quantitative evidence of a relationship between formative assessment practices and student achievement. Although there are some weaknesses in this aspect of their study (inadequate comparison or control data), these results do point towards a positive relationship. These results also suggest the need for future research. In their evaluation of the research value of their study, Black et al. may have understated the contribution made by their description of the changes that happened among their participating teachers and the evidence in that description of greater efficacy among the teachers. This also suggests an area worthy of additional research related to how implementation of formative uses of assessment at the classroom level could actually increase teacher efficacy. Should I read it? In the end, the most important question to ask is whether or not the cost of the time spent reading this book would be exceeded by the benefits of the insights gained. Educator readers can expect to gain inspiration, specific ideas, and advice from other practicing educators about changes they might consider making to their practice. Educational research readers can expect to gain an understanding of the current research on formative classroom assessment, a model for constructing a study that is consistent with a theoretical stance, and some suggestions for future studies to conduct. Staff development professionals can expect to gain specific strategies, stories to use and recommendations related to the nuance of using classroom assessment formatively. So should you read this book? For practicing teachers, educational researchers and anyone with an interest in improving instructional practice and the learning experience of students, the answer is a resounding yes. Reference Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education, 5(1), 7-74. About the reviewer Julie R. O'Brian is the Co-Director of the Colorado Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT) Program in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Denver. Her expertise is in the area of educational technology (including instructional applications and data technology system architecture), standards-based education, assessment, data-driven instructional practice, educational accountability, teacher quality, and education policy. She was formerly a state coordinator for the Education Commission of the States – providing information and technical assistance to state education policy makers across the country, and acting as the organizational lead on Educational Accountability policy and system design. She received my bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder in mathematics and computer science, and a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Colorado at Denver. Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.