AERC Hosts: Making Space for Accessible Assessment: Student experience of Assessment for Learning

Big projects with lots of moving parts are an opportunity to create nuanced pictures of teacher practice and student outcomes. Making space within that tapestry presents challenges for individual researchers who a looking for insights and stories of impact to share in their education communities.

The research we’ll talk about today draws on an exciting ARC Linkage that brought together the fields of assessment and inclusion in a secondary school context.

While we explored ways to make summative assessment more accessible for students with language and attentional difficulties and measured the impact, we also problematised Assessment for Learning practices by identifying barriers and potential enablers for a range of learners. Data were collected from 35 student interviews and 22 focus groups in three secondary schools in south-east Queensland to answer the questions: How do students experience AfL pedagogies in Year 10 English? and What differences are there in the experiences of students with likely language and attentional difficulties? Critical insights from all students about how they searched for and secured cohesive participatory experiences points to fragmentation as a 'moment of discomfort' that can be mobilised in generative ways to expand students' identities as developing disciplinary experts.

This brown bag seminar hosted by AERC is connected with the ARC Linkage Project Improving outcomes through accessible assessment and inclusive practice.

My research explores students’ classroom experiences of assessment to improve teacher practice and student agency. My current projects and publications are in accessible assessment practices in secondary school English and Mathematics and a reflective teaching inquiry for equity, diversity and inclusion in higher education. Before and beyond university, I was a long-time English Head of Faculty. I co-author Cambridge’s Essential English for Queensland Schools, now in its third edition. As Vice President of the English Teachers Association of Queensland, I take an active interest in instructional leadership and English curriculum development.

RSVP:  AERC-info@unimelb.edu.au

Or join us via zoom: https://go.unimelb.edu.au/8zu8