Are you an Ontario secondary teacher, who is moving away from grades?  I’d love to hear from you:

I am currently a doctoral candidate in the Educational Leadership and Policy program of the department of Leadership, Higher Education, and Adult Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. I am doing this research as part of the requirement for the completion of my PhD dissertation, under the supervision of Dr. Carol Campbell.

Overview of the study

The purpose of the research revolves around teachers’ navigation of challenges faced as they choose to go “gradeless”. This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of how teachers conceptualize assessment and the use of grades, how they operationalize assessment processes within their pedagogy, how they see this impacting the school and classroom culture, and how they navigate within the policies set at the school, board and provincial level.

The name of this research project is:

“Going Gradeless”: Experiences of Ontario Teachers Moving from Marks to Feedback-based Assessment

Examples of questions that I have in mind but may or may not ask depending on themes that emerge as our dialogue evolves are:

Please set the context by describing your teaching experience.

Please describe your journey.

How did you come to consider the option to “go gradeless”.

How has your assessment practice changed?

What has the impact been on your students?

What roadblocks have you encountered?

How do you feel about this change?

What do you think are the next steps for you? For your school?

Participation

Your part in the research, if you agree, is to participate in an informal interview, of 30 to 60 minutes either face to face or via Skype or equivalent, where you will share some of the assessment decisions you have made, and how these have been influenced by your education, experience, current context, and professional community. The interview will be informal, will last approximately one hour, and will be audiotaped with your permission in order to create a written transcript. The interview will begin with guided questions, as well as open-ended probes, to allow for flexibility in the range of topics discussed. Participation is completely voluntary, and should you decide to participate, you may decline to answer any questions, or end the interview at any time. Once the interview has concluded, you may also contact me by phone or email up to three months following the interviewto ask to withdraw from the study, and request that the entire verbal and written transcript of your interview be destroyed.

Confidentiality and Risks

Your responses will be treated in the strictest confidence, as per the University of Toronto ethics guidelines. There are no known risks associated with participating in this research study. Potential limitations in my ability to guarantee anonymity minimal, as any data collected will be confidential, and all identifying information relating to you, your school or your board will be removed and given pseudonyms.  All paper-based data such as field notes will be stored in a locked filing cabinet at the researcher’s home. All digital data gathered from the study will be stored in a password-protected electronic format on a laptop computer. Only the researcher and supervisor will have access to the data. At no time will your responses be judged or evaluated, nor will any value judgment be placed on your responses as there are no “right” answers. Some of the verbatim examples provided might be published without the participants being identified, to illustrate the overall results of the study.All data in the form of transcripts, field notes and documents will be destroyed one year after the completion of my doctoral degree.

Potential benefits

There will be no compensation for participating in this study, however participants may benefit from the experience by self-reflecting on your teaching practices, explore assessment options, and clarify next steps for your own professional growth. You will also be contributing to the professional growth of the researcher, her colleagues, and other graduate students of OISE.Your input will be adding to the current literature on classroom assessment, and may help educators and policymakers to deepen their understanding and drive change. Results of this study may be used in reports, conference presentation and publications. Interested participants will be sent a summary of the research findings by email.

For any further details, please contact me at terry.whitmell@mail.utoronto.ca, or my thesis supervisor Dr. Carol Campbell at carol.campbell@utoronto.ca. If you have any questions related to your rights as a participant in this study, or if you have any complains or concerns about how you have been treated as a research participant, please contact the Office of Research Ethics, ethics.review@utoronto.ca or 416-946-3273.

Sincerely,

Terry Whitmell, PhD Student

OISE, University of Toronto

252 Bloor Street West

Toronto, ON, M5S 1V6, Canada

 

 

I just read @jess__bloom‘s blog post “The Gamification of Work“, and I think we could substitute “school” for “work”.

Our Ontario secondary school program requires our students to work for four years, to earn 30 credits.  In each credit there are a series of Overall Expectations, with Specific Expectations within each. There are 18 compulsory credits, and 12 optional, and once you earn them you are granted a diploma. If you achieve to a certain level in your final year, you will also be granted the title of “Ontario Scholar”. In addition, our post-secondary institutions require some of these credits for admission, so there’s the reward of admission to one of our top universities or colleges.

What if we had software that tracked each expectation, and provided a visual for each one that was achieved? I’ve played games such as Diner Dash and Klondike, and found them both addictive and satisfying.  I think that turning our students’ achievements into high scores and “conquered lands” might be a fun and effective way to support students’ sense of accomplishment.  It might just be the feedback that they need to persevere!

What do you think would make the best “world” for us to build online, to represent four years of secondary education?

It’s a weekend of procrastination as I prepare for my upcoming Comprehensive Exam. This has been very productive, as I have already hit 14,000 steps on my Fitbit by mowing the lawn, and I’ve enjoyed this week’s Modern Learners Podcast (#44 with Dr. Susan Blum) which has extended my thinking about learning, schooling, policy and assessment.  One of the areas that Dr. Susan Blum and Will Richardson agree on is the value of feedback rather than marks.  And they discuss in the podcast the use of a portfolio as an alternative to traditional evaluation methods.  Despite this positive learning experience, I am not really any better prepared for my upcoming exam than I was this morning.

My Comprehensive Exam, as designed by the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education for our Educational Leadership and Policy Program at OISE (Ontario Institute of Studies in Education) at the University of Toronto, is a wonderful example of the type of assessment supported by Dr. Blum and Will Richardson.

The guidelines (Comprehensive Examination Guidelines) direct the candidate to create a portfolio linking five artefacts to seven skills, and to write an original paper.  The portfolio of artefacts and reflections, and the original paper are then presented to an examining panel in a 90-minute session.  In my case, this is scheduled for next Thursday.

Here is the introduction to my portfolio:

The original paper (Terry Whitmell May 2018) focuses primarily on policy in the context of social diversity. The issues of leadership and change are referenced as they relate to the implementation of policy.  The five artifacts were chosen as representative of a similar focus, and illustrate achievement of the seven areas of knowledge, skills and abilities:

	Research Design	Conducting Research	Analyzing Data	Communicating Research Results	Knowledge of the broader field of education leadership and policy	Knowledge of Major Theoretical Frameworks in the Field	Synthesizing Existing Literature
Implementation of 21st Century Competencies Requires Revolution not Renovation Reflection 1				X	X	X	X
Gandhi Freire and Civics Education Appendix A Appendix B Reflection 2			X	X	X	X	X
Survey Proposal: Use of Learning Goals & Success Criteria to Support Student Engagement and Achievement Reflection 3	X	X	X	X	X
Classroom Assessment Practices of Early-Career Ontario Secondary School Teachers Reflection 4	X	X	X	X	X
What Motivates Teachers to Lead Change? Reflection 5			X	X	X	X	X

In my presentation, I will connect these five artifacts and the original paper to a conceptual framework that I developed while writing a literature review of 21st Century Modern Learning:

Conceptual Framework for Comprehensive Exam Presentation

As you can see, much of my work deviates from Educational Leadership and Policy, into Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, and I am seeing challenges with our current structures that separate the two.  My paper explores some of these structures, where the intent of policy results in very different outcomes once the policies are enacted in the classroom. In my conceptual framework, I see learning theory at one end, and educational policy at the other, and the framework of “Know, Do, Be, Live Together” in the middle.  If learning and policy both aligned with this simple framework, keeping the “bigger picture” in mind, we would have a much better learning environment for our students.

Debbie Zacarian, Lourdes Alvarez-Ortiz and Judie Haynes have written an excellent guide for teachers and administrators that provides a rationale for a strengths-based approach, direction for teachers in their work in the classroom and strategies to support the school in its partnership with families and other community agencies.

In the first chapter, they incorporate research into positive psychology, positive youth development, neuroplasticity, and growth mindset to support the need for instructional practices to support our students.

The second chapter considers how educators can reflect on their own strengths, and then use these to support students and families living with trauma, violence, and chronic stress.

Chapters three and four focus on the classroom through teaching practices that connect academic learning to students’ personal, cultural, and world experiences while honouring what students bring to the classroom.  The practical nature of this advice, such as the critical importance of routines and predictability or the need for positive, affirming and energizing feedback, had me nodding my head in agreement.  Implementation of these within a classroom would benefit all students, not just those living with trauma, violence and stress.

Chapter five considers the families and guardians, and chapter six argues for a whole-school strengths-based approach and vision.

Whether you are a teacher hoping to make your classroom more responsive to the needs of your students, or an administrator looking to focus your work to meet all students’ needs, there’s something for you in this book.

When designing a course based on prescribed standards or expectations, our teachers utilize Wiggins and McTighe’s “Backward Design”.  They group expectations, develop “Big Ideas”, “Enduring Understandings”, and “Essential Questions”, and then design assessment tasks that will allow their students to demonstrate achievement of these.  Their lessons scaffold and support learning, to ensure that their students are able to achieve success.

Our teachers develop a strong sense of why and what they are doing, but do their students?

When teachers are able to make connections, and put the learning in context, students are able to do so as well.  My grade 11 English teacher, Mrs. Miller, focussed all of our learning on the theme of LOVE, perfect for hormone-crazy 16-year-olds.  In the same year, our World Religions teacher, Mr. Peter Carver, connected all our learning to answering Eternal Questions.  And so when I had to connect all the skills and content of our grade 9 business course “Introduction to Information Technology”, I had the students explore their inner entrepreneur, and design and plan for a fantasy business.

My question is, can we do this for courses like Math?  Like Science?  Like Computer Science?

In my next three blog posts, I am going to try it out.  I’ll take a subject area that I know little about, look at the Ontario Ministry of Education curriculum documents, explore the textbooks and resources, and create either a Textbook Tale, a Meaning Map, or a series of Life Lessons that might create coherence for our 21st century teens.