Planning for Learning and Assessment

The planning process that is given at the start of this presentation does promote some sort of an order:

1. Select the learning outcomes on which to focus
2. Select strategies to promote consistency of teacher judgment
3. Make explicit what students need to know and do to demonstrate the learning outcomes
4. Choose the context/s for learning
5. Select and sequence learning activities and teaching strategies
6. Identify or design assessment opportunities
7. Identify how to gather and record evidence
8. Identify when and how judgments will be made
9. Identify when and how reporting of student progress will occur

It then circles back to the beginning. There is nothing in the middle but cross linking arrows, I guess depicting linking between any of the steps.

I’m not sure that I would do it quite in that order. From Engineering, and Engineering Education, I am familiar with design cycles. A very succinct one of those is

Ask

Imagine

Plan

Create

Improve

These are all surrounding the Goal. The goal is the most important thing, so when you are asking questions about the context, it is with the goal in mind. When you imagine, well, the imagination can run wild, but there is no point to grand imaginings without keeping the goal in mind. Through to improving so that the solution better meets the goal, not just improves in a haphazard way. No point making it faster, when you actually need to make it stronger.

It is also necessary to make the learning as authentic as possible. This also means that the goal, the context, is the most important.

So my order might actually be more like this:

1. Choose the context/s for learning
2. Make explicit what students need to know and do to demonstrate the learning outcomes
3. Select and sequence learning activities and teaching strategies
4. Identify or design assessment opportunities
5. Identify when and how judgments will be made
6. Identify how to gather and record evidence
7. Select strategies to promote consistency of teacher judgment
8. Identify when and how reporting of student progress will occur

At the centre would be the learning outcomes. Of course these learning outcomes would be context driven.

I think the diagram with curriculum intent, pedagogy and assessment is meaning that all three areas are intricately linked. The planning questions:

What do I want students to learn? (CI)

How will they learn what is intended? (P)

How will I know when they have learned? (A)

How will I use what I learn about the students’ performance? (A)

are inseparable. What and how they learn are very close and if done well, if they have done the ‘how’ then it naturally follows the knowing when they have learned it.

In Engineering terms, the goal or solution or outcome, can’t be separated from how to achieve it, and the success is just not there until it is there. No point having a goal of being able to transport goods and people across a river and only building a bridge half way or a barge that holds everything, but just before it makes it across it gets swept away by a strong current. “Oh that’s OK, the goods nearly made it. It was a fantastic idea and so that’s fine, that’s all we were looking for.”