Interview

Professor Gordon Stobart believes that assessment shapes our learning and our lives, and so in turn expects assessors and the educational community to shape up

Testing times

 

The black and white photograph, pinned to the wall of Gordon Stobart's office, shows a regimented class where children sit in rows. But there is one anomaly: a young boy is kneeling on a chair to peer over the shoulder of his classmate. He could be copying his friend's work or legitimately conferring with him in some 1950's experiment in peer working. Or perhaps he is just downright naughty.

The image, by post-war photographer Robert Doisneau, is a clue to how the ambiguities of the learning process and classroom interaction fascinate Stobart, Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, and a champion of assessment. Every assessment expert is preoccupied with the challenges of creating and overseeing a fair process, but Stobart seems to mind more than most.

He is the personififi cation of intellectual rigour - an earnest and approachable man who is intrigued by a pupil's journey to learning and by the education community's constant quest to make that learning appropriate, even though this may never happen - as in the case, he thinks, of Assessment for Learning.

 

"It's very much about how we learn, what goes on in learning and whether exams, which are a hobby horse of mine, and Professor Gordon Stobart believes that assessment shapes our learning and our lives, and so in turn expects assessors and the educational community to shape up other assessments, shape how we learn," he says. "How can we do that as well as possible to make it a constructive learning experience? How can we use assessment to directly benefifi t learning? I am not saying exams and tests don't lead to learning but I think that Assessment for Learning (AfL) has a much more direct engagement with it," he says.

 

Gaining true understanding

 

Stobart is candid about his concerns. "I think AfL is something that we will never get right," he says. "Understanding is moving all the time, but I think that the more we do on it, the more we realise how complicated it all is."

It seems strange that a resident of the Institute of Education would describe the process of teaching and learning as 'complicated', but the motivation to unravel how, and where, people learn has moulded Stobart's thinking and his career choices.

"I think that's probably been a consistent theme about why I became an educational psychologist and in some of the other things I have been involved in," he says.

Stobart's personal learning journey started with a degree in theology which led to posts teaching the subject in Africa and South London until he lost his faith.

"I lost the light and changed my religious views," he admits, "and felt I had to retrain as an educational psychologist."

Stobart, who travelled to California on a Fulbright scholarship to produce a doctorate on special educational needs, was later to return to the UK as head of research, for London Exams. He has commented, with typical candour and humour about this time:

" It gave me insights into how examinations work, and left me wary of making too many grand claims about their virtue and reliability - in the same way that people who have worked in pie factories are wary of pies."

He went on to join NCVQ, worked there developing the GNVQ, and was then "merged into the QCA". He joined the Institute of Education in 2000 and describes himself, with typical self-depracation, as a "late-developing academic".

All of Stobart's interests and experience have shaped the views he has today, and the engaging and arresting manner in which he can share them. Delegates at the CIEA's annual conference this month (see News, page 8) will vouch for the ease and good humour with which he can explore key considerations surrounding the 'spirit' mand 'letter' of appropriate assessment,
while leaving no doubt in anyone's mind that assessment is a process which can change or shape lives.

He made its importance very clear in his book, published last year, Testing Times - the uses and abuses of assessment: "Assessment in the form of test and examinations is a powerful activity, which shapes how societies, groups and individuals understand themselves," he wrote.

Three key points in that book have had great resonance and explain the uses and abuses aspect of the sub-heading. For example: "Assessment is a value-laden social activity and there is no such thing as 'culturefree' assessment"... "Assessment does not objectively measure what is already there, but rather creates and shapes what is measured
- it is capable of 'making up people'," and "Assessment impacts directly on what and how we learn and can undermine or encourage effective learning".

 

Learning versus results

 

In the early part of the book, these points are used to show how even 11-year old children "make up" themselves and apply labels relating to their own "morality and goodness" derived from their Key Stage 2 test results (for example, they think a low grade means that they might be wayward in later life). Of course the book was published before this month's recommendations of the Report on School Accountability and Testing by the Expert Group were made public, but Stobart has long been concerned that the KS2 tests distort teaching and learning, and that pupils have been put under pressure to achieve the results which the school needs, rather than the learning which they require.

He is concerned that single-level tests currently being piloted, and upon which he has been asked for advice, could promote that same testing culture. "I think they will if they are used for the same accountability progression targets. If we can move away from the target side of these then they might be a useful indicator of progress, but as soon as you build rewards and consequences in they take on a new complexion," he says.

Stobart now thinks that since Testing Times was published he would like to make even stronger statements about the impact of assessment.

" Assessment is a value-driven activity and it is never neutral," he says, "Some people make it sound as though it is scientific and just measures what's there. My argument would be that however we assess things shapes how we understand what these things are, or the labels that we are given. And it will also shape how we teach and how we learn about this."

He points to the use of intelligence tests as a major example of catering for, and living up to, the label. These tests, which were an extension of pre-conceived ideas, were developed at the turn of the last century and originally saw intelligence as fi xed and innate.

"The way intelligence tests were developed was not the product of science but of people's social values, who then used tests and statistics to convince people that this is how it was."

 

Outdated attitudes still lurk

 

In Stobart's eyes the misuse of these tests kick-started the inequality of the 11-plus exam, the outcome of which determined the type of education and opportunities children received: "There are whole generations for whom the 11-plus signalled whether you had 'got it,' or not, academically."

The relevance of reminding us that 11- plus irrevocably pigeonholed young people is that Stobart thinks that its vestiges and the intelligence tests which pre-dated it, are still lurking in the classroom.

"One of my current hobby horses is that I think we are using ability language in the same way," he says. "Ability is actually a cover, and if you just peel it back a little bit there are some old ideas about intelligence."

Stobart says the problem is in the way schools perpetuate these issues.

"When we talk about low ability we actually think that there is not much we can do about it, as opposed to developed ability which you can improve." He makes the distinction even clearer: "Ability is the product of learning not something that causes you learning."

Stobart says that the same fi xed views apply to our interpretation of intelligence which he thinks refl ects much more to do with opinions of social position and social learning.

"We perceive that you do badly because you are at a disadvantage, so it's a different reading of the same material, just like my concerns about ways in which teachers and others talk about ability in schools."

He also has great concerns about the use of feedback, which is a critical part of Assessment for Learning. "How the teacher, or others, gives information helps the learning move on. But the more that is researched about feedback, the more it appears that feedback works for one person but doesn't work for another," he says. "You can give two people the same feedback; for one it moves their learning on but for the other the feedback moves their learning backwards."

Stobart shares his favourite example of this - that telling an expert something is wrong triggers meta-learning. "It will be useful advice, they are suffi ciently motivated and it will spur them on. But to say that to a novice learner about exactly the same problem may put them off altogether, because they will say: 'if that's wrong I am not going to get anywhere'."

Luminaries such as the Assessment Reform Group (see box, opposite), of which Stobart is a core member, believe part of the problem now is that AfL is in danger of becoming mechanistic, which is at odds with the Assessment Reform Group's vision.

"If you look at the AfL strategy it is far more about systematic assessment, assessing pupil progress, which is not necessarily formative assessment at all. It may just be a way of getting reliable summative assessment," he says.

"The same goes for monitoring where students are in their learning," he adds. The ARG agrees monitoring has to happen, but questions what happens when it is translated as tracking. "We might want to ask some questions about whether that is really monitoring learning or just monitoring results?" he says. "We don't think that the two are the same."

 

One size doesn't fit all

 

He thinks the problem is that AfL has become the "icing on the cake" or "a Trojan horse", which is fi lled with popular elements such as assessing pupil progress, tracking, and data monitoring. Stobart and his peers at the ARG would rather see actual learning goals rather than performance goals being part of the process in order to make a difference to the pupils' learning.

So where does this leave us? In summary Stobart wants to get away from using tests for accountability purposes which he feels "distorts" the system.

"We are back with the problem that the job of teachers has become simply to get results. The learning is secondary to the results and that becomes the concern," he says. "One way forward is to ask if we need to make more use of teacher assessment rather than test results."

So should we despair about the state of learning, or was it ever thus? Probably the latter, says Stobart, who anticipates the usual media and political ping-pong over exam results this summer.

"How we treat exams and exam results is an English cultural phenomenon," he says, pointing out that no-one can please all the people all of the time.

In August the Government might say 'well done', but the Opposition will say that exams have 'just got easier'.

"I remember giving an after-dinner speech a couple of years ago on the topic of 'when was the golden year of education'?" he says. "And the answer is you can't find it, because whenever you have located it, somebody at that point will always have said: 'It was better 30 years ago.'"

 

CV

Age: 66
Qualifi cations: PhD (Psychology), Claremont Graduate School, California (Fulbright Scholarship 1980-85), Educational Psychologist Training (Tavistock Clinic); BSc (Psychology) Hons, Birbeck College, University of London; MA (Theology), University of Manchester; Certifi cate in Education, First Class, University of Manchester; BA (Theology) with Distinction, University of Manchester
Employment includes: 2007- Professor of Education Institute of Education University of London 2002-2007 Reader of Education Institute of Education University of London 2000-2002 Senior Lecturer in Assessment, Institute of Education University of London 1997-2000 Principal Research Officer, Assessment & Learning Qualifi cations and Curriculum Authority (QCA) 1993-1997 Principal Research Offi cer, National Council for Vocational Qualifi cations (NCVQ) 1989-1993 Head of Research, University of London Examinations and Assessment Council 1986-1988 Research Officer, University of London School Examinations Board 1985 (Aug -Dec) Researcher, Home Office 1980-1985 Fulbright Scholar, Claremont Graduate School, California (PhD) 1976-1979 Educational Psychologist, Barking and Dagenham School Psychological Service 1967-75 Teaching posts at, Thomas Calton Comprehensive School, Peckham, London and Kenneth Kaunda Secondary School, Chinsali, Zambia

 

Assessment Reform Group

Stobart is a core member of the Assessment Reform Group. Current members are Paul Black, Richard Daugherty, Kathryn Ecclestone, John Gardner, Wynne Harlen, Louise Hayward and Mary James.

The group, which last year published Changing Assessment Practices, a guide to new standards for classroom assessment practices, fi rst met 20 years ago to respond to the national curriculum and the new assessment systems. It became interested in formative assessment and commissioned Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam to review the evidence. They went on to write Inside the Black Box which sold more than 60,000 copies.

"I think that was the start of the public interest in AfL," says Stobart. "Something caught teachers' imaginations and the policy makers had to respond, so we feel that what we have been doing has been recognised."

Stobart is also a member of an international group on assessment, whose members meet every three years to compare pedagogy from classrooms around the world. "It's rather like the Assessment Reform Group in that it hasn't got a balance sheet or funders, it has been a voluntary group over the years. Part of the deal was we would produce things, rather than just talk."

As he told delegates at this month's CIEA conference, this international group has reached a shared 'second generation' definition of AfL which seeks to counteract some of the more mechanistic and data driven interpretations given to their original (2002) defi nition. In this latest defi nition the emphasis is on the quality of interaction in the classroom:

"AfL is part of everyday practice by student, teacher and peers that seeks, reflects upon, and responds to, information from dialogue, demonstration and observation in a way that enhances ongoing learning," he explains.