Profiling Developmental Standards of Learning for Students with Additional Needs (SWANs)

Project Contact

The aim of this research was to develop and validate procedures for monitoring learning progress for students with additional learning needs. The research was grounded on international and national shifts towards standards- and criterion-referenced assessment of student outcomes. It extended that work to assist teachers to assess and report development for students with diverse intellectual and learning disabilities and to foster the use and dissemination of teaching strategies and resources that were specifically linked to learning standards and pathways.

In Australia, schools are required by legislation to enrol students with a range of additional learning needs. Indeed, the Disability Standards for Education (2005) set out the obligation of schools to ensure that all students have access to educational opportunities without experiencing discrimination (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Disability Discrimination Act, 1992). There is, however, a need to provide teachers with guidance about appropriate developmental goals and effective teaching strategies for their students with disabilities, and to disseminate knowledge about how best to design learning programs for these students. This was reflected in the aims of the SWANs project, which were:

• To develop and validate assessment materials that described expected progress in the foundational skills of communication, literacy, personal learning (e.g., attention, memory, executive functioning), emotional self-management, and interpersonal processes for students with additional learning needs, and that were appropriate for all students regardless of the nature of their learning needs.
• To investigate relationships between sub-types of additional learning needs and learning pathways.
• To assist teachers in both mainstream and special schools to use the assessment materials to inform their decisions about effective and targeted teaching strategies for students with additional learning needs, and to monitor and report their students’ progress.

In 2007, more than 70 experienced teachers of students with additional needs participated in a series of workshops held at the University of Melbourne. They worked with the research team to draft statements of competencies for defining developmental pathways of learning for students with additional needs. These observation statements formed the basis of three sets of assessment materials (related to students’ intrapersonal development, interpersonal processes, and communication and literacy) that were distributed to 77 schools (both mainstream and specialist) for use by teachers.

Almost 700 teachers of students with additional needs used the materials in their classrooms in late 2007. They recorded their observations of learning for their students against statements of competencies in communication and literacy, intrapersonal learning, and interpersonal development.
Next, the data on teachers’ observations of their students’ proficiency were calibrated to refine and improve the assessment materials and, in 2008, teachers were asked to monitor and record the learning progress of their students using these materials. Experienced teachers were asked to contribute to focus group discussions designed to evaluate the assessment materials and to suggest teaching and learning strategies, and the resources needed for these strategies, for students at different levels of development.

Schools that participated in the SWANs research in 2007 were invited to take part in the ongoing phases of the project, which took place over 2008 and 2009. Each school was asked to nominate a person to lead the project within the school, and a team of at least three teachers to participate in the research.

Each teacher in a school team was asked to assess up to three students on three occasions (at the end of terms 2 and 4, 2008, and at the end of term 2, 2009) using assessment materials that were trialled in 2007 and refined by the research team in early 2008. The data of teachers’ assessments of their students were checked to examine whether they provided information that was sufficiently sensitive to detect development in student performance.

The school’s team leader was responsible for reporting information to the research team on school-based activities involving targeted intervention for individual students and in turn for interpreting to their colleagues the assessment reports provided by the research team. This team-based protocol and its impact on student learning was described in full by Griffin, Murray, Care, Thomas and Perri (2010). Team leaders also contributed to discussions about the usefulness of the assessment materials, in terms of teachers’ ability to communicate with each other and with other stakeholders (students, parents, principals, support professionals) about the learning progress of their students.

Reference
Griffin, P., Murray, L., Care, E., Thomas, A., & Perri, P. (2010). Developmental assessment: Lifting literacy through professional learning teams. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, Vol.17:4, pp. 383-397