Commentary: Directions for Assessment in New Zealand · Assessment Matters 4 : 2012 129 Commentary:...

Assessment Matters 4 : 2012 129

Commentary: Directions for Assessment in New Zealand

Lester Flockton

Directions for Assessment in New Zealand (DANZ), published in March 2009, was written to provide strategic advice to the Ministry of Education to guide and inform the design of new and improved strategies, policies and plans for assessment. The central premise of that advice is that all young people should be educated in ways that develop their capacity to assess their own learning. Students who have well-developed assessment capabilities are better able and motivated to access, interpret and use information from quality assessment in ways that affirm or further their learning.

In placing students at the centre of assessment practice, the advice is consistent with the best of current thinking, including the ideas behind “assessment for learning”, the use of assessment feedback to enhance teaching and learning and professional learning designed to assist teachers to enhance their students’ assessment capabilities.

Directions for Assessment in New Zealand (DANZ) (Absolum, Flockton, Hattie, Hipkins, & Reid, 2009) arose out of a New Zealand Ministry of Education initiative to review its 2001 National Assessment Strategy. In 2006 the Ministry of Education convened a project reference group to explore the scope of a revised and improved strategy. It also undertook an internal stocktake of assessment policy and practice. In 2008 the Ministry of Education proceeded to a “second phase” in the development of a revised National Assessment Strategy when it formed an independent group to formulate advice about directions for assessment in New Zealand schools, taking into account the ideas and evidence collected from the Ministry of Education’s own review work, the discussions of the project reference group and a number of papers commissioned to further inform the development of the strategy.

130 Assessment Matters 4 : 2012

The group of writers engaged by the Ministry to further guide the revision of assessment strategy (the authors of DANZ) were initially under the impression that their function was to propose a revised assessment strategy. As the development of the strategy progressed, the status of the work being undertaken by the writers, done in discussion with senior Ministry of Education officials, and with feedback from assessment specialists nationally and internationally, was further clarified. It was to be a paper contributing to the Ministry of Education process of designing new policies and strategies in assessment. Following publication of DANZ in 2009, the Ministry of Education published its position paper on assessment (schooling sector) in 2010. DANZ is referred to in that position paper.

My intentions in this commentary are to promote and justify the vision offered in DANZ, and to identify some of the hurdles it must cross if this vision is to be realised in practice. The vision is clear: an approach to assessment where students are centrally engaged in both the action and processes of assessment. To achieve this, students need to be skilfully supported to develop the ability to analyse and judge their own learning as it proceeds, and know what they must do in order to further progress their learning. The rationale for this vision finds considerable support from social cognitive theory that argues the influence of self-efficacy beliefs on motivation, self-regulation and achievement in both formal and informal learning environments (see, for example, Usher & Pajares, 2008, p. 791).

While both traditional approaches (assessment of learning) and more recent developments (assessment for learning) have oriented assessment towards something that is done to or for students by teachers and agencies (students perform, others observe, judge, give feedback), the DANZ strategy proposes a contiguous duality of capability in “the priority that ranks above all others: strengthening the assessment capability of students by enhancing the assessment capabilities of teachers, school leaders, parents, and those who support them” (Absolum et al., 2009, p. 6). In an advancing paradigm for learning, it is not sufficient for assessors and assessment to be external to the student; the student, supported by other assessors, must be engaged at the heart of the process.

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A rationale: Student assessment capability and self-efficacyIf we are to understand and accept that learning is a very individual thing, and that students in any given class will vary considerably in their learning capacities, dispositions and achievements, then our approaches to assessment somehow need to centre on students as individuals, especially if we are genuinely committed to assessment for learning. In his searching inquiry into teaching and learning, Nuthall (2001) came to realise that students already know at least 40–50 percent of what teachers intend them to learn:

Consequently they [the students] spend a lot of time in activities that relate to what they already know and can do. But this prior knowledge is specific to individual students, and the teacher cannot assume that more than a tiny fraction is common to the class as a whole. As a consequence, at least a third of what a student learns is unique to that student, and the rest is learned by no more than three or four others. (p. 12)

I find it hardly surprising, therefore, that variance in what is learned and how much is learned can be more readily observed within individual classrooms and schools than across schools generally. This is not well understood by those who overstate the significance of within-school achievement variance. Thus judgement making that is primarily intended to further advance the learning of the individual student needs to centre on the student relative to what they can already do, and what they need to do in order to further progress their learning. I argue that when students are centrally engaged in processes of judgement making and goal setting the risks of over-generalising towards a larger reference group (depersonalisation) can be markedly reduced.

The relevance or validity of assessment for the student as an individual is vital to any approach. Research findings for some time have noted that students display a great range of individual differences in aptitudes and motivation and suggest that these can be much more powerful than anything their teacher alone does in determining how much they learn (Brophy, 2008, p. 20). Regardless of arguments this might provoke, I think there is compelling reason for recognising and accommodating

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conditions that give centrality to student self-efficacy in approaches to assessment.

Self-efficacy is central to both learning and achievement. Simply put, it is seen in the extent to which a person believes in his or her capacity to accomplish goals and deal with the challenges of life. It follows, therefore, that strong self-efficacy can lead to stronger attainment in learning and life. According to Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive perspective, “self-efficacy beliefs help determine the choices people make, the effort they put forth, the persistence and perseverance they display in the face of difficulties” (Usher & Pajares, 2008, p. 751). In their review and critique of investigations, Usher and Pajares (2008) report:

self-efficacy has received ample attention in educational research, where it has been shown to predict students’ academic achievement across academic areas and levels … and it is associated with key motivation constructs such as causal attributions, self-concept, optimism, achievement goal orientation, academic help-seeking, anxiety and value. (p. 751)

Zimmerman, Bandura and Martinez-Pons (1992) likewise alert us to an increasing body of evidence that learners showing a high sense of self-efficacy are more successful self-regulators of their own learning, which in turn “influences the knowledge and skill goals they set for themselves and their commitment to fulfil these challenges” (p. 664). They maintain that this conception of self-directed learning not only encompasses the cognitive skills emphasised by metacognitive theorists, but also extends to include the self-regulation of motivation, the learning environment and social supports for self-directedness.

Feedback and next stepsThe implications of self-efficacy for pedagogically based assessment approaches intended to support students’ learning through feedback and the prescription of “next steps” warrant our attention. This “next steps” feedback is consistent with social cognitive theory insomuch as

goals increase people’s cognitive and affective reactions to performance outcomes because goals specify the requirements for personal success, and prompt self-monitoring and self-judgements of performance attainments. (Zimmerman et al., 1992, p. 664)

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However, I am of the view that if “next steps” are to have the necessary motivational force for learners, they need to go beyond being unidirectional specifications of expectations determined by the teacher. They need to be perceived by the learner to be worthwhile, attainable and necessary for goal achievement, since self-regulation of motivation to climb the “next steps” will depend as much on self-efficacy beliefs as on the goals they prescribe.

Developing student assessment capability as advocated by DANZ recognises the determinants for learning outcomes that can result from assessment practice, and particularly the importance of a participatory role for the student. It is not enough for students to simply receive feedback from others’ assessments of their performance. Within an environment of mutual trust, respect and communication, they must themselves be active participants in contributing to the feedback and deciding the learning goals that arise from it. The teacher, therefore, has a critical responsibility to support students to develop both confidence and capability, and to provide the guidance and opportunities students need to be actively engaged in processes of judging, analysing, setting and monitoring goals. This not only requires that students have the self-efficacy (can do, want to do) needed for personal goal setting; it also requires that their teachers and others who support their learning are assessment capable and committed to empowering students to be at the centre of quality assessment practice:

What assessment information is gathered, the conditions under which it is gathered, and how it is subsequently used, profoundly affect student motivation and capacity to learn. If we get the conditions wrong—if we collect the wrong information in the wrong way for the wrong purposes—we will add to the number of students who disengage from learning and leave school with little to show for it. If we get the conditions right, the reverse will be true: achievement will increase and disparities decrease. (Absolum et al., 2009, p. 6)

Critical contingencies for the realisation of the DANZ visionA major part of the work leading to the development of the vision proposed in DANZ involved a searching consideration of the constituents of quality assessment within the context of an educational landscape



that has changed in recent years, and which we can expect to continue to change amidst challenges arising out of healthy and necessary debate. It is not enough to think of quality assessment only in terms of strengths of validity, reliability, manageability and fairness of the information it provides. Assessment also needs to be viewed as a socially constructed and contextualised process.

Recognising that there are multiple perspectives on assessment, we were led to probe a number of critical questions: What does quality assessment information look like? Who is it for? How should it be conducted? In what form should it be communicated? How should it be used to advantage student learning? While investigating these and other questions it was clear that account needed to be taken of the full range of contextual factors that exercise influence, for better or worse, over assessment practice in New Zealand schools. These span system-level arrangements such as policy, regulatory frameworks, qualifications structures, school reviews, national curriculum and professional support through to pedagogical and other practices that directly impact upon diverse students, their learning and their motivation. What became clear from this examination was that “we cannot continue exactly as before if policies or practices are to meet the needs of changing times and circumstances and reflect growing understandings about what constitutes good practice” (Absolum et al., 2009, p. 7).

In seeking to “get it right” through placing students at the heart of the assessment process and developing their capability to engage in the assessment of their own learning, DANZ identified nine educational imperatives that have the potential to be addressed through the proposed direction (Table 1). Each of these imperatives is critical to building quality assessment practice, particularly if assessment is viewed as a socio-pedagogical process.

It is one thing to propose a forward-thinking direction for assessment policy and practice in New Zealand; it is another to identify what is required for this to be realised. An important part of the development of DANZ was therefore concerned with examining the extent of “fit” between current assessment-related strategy and the proposed direction, giving consideration to how to build on the best of current assessment strategies, then deciding what changes or provisions would be needed.

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Table 1 Nine educational imperatives DANZ potentially addresses

Curriculum, learning and assessment

The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) vision, principles, values and key competencies together with the learning area statements focus attention on a wider range of purposes for learning and on ways of thinking about learning.

Attending to the needs of all our students

Students come to school with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. Assessment practice needs to be inclusive.

Greater engagement

The importance of students seeing the connection between what happens at school and their out-of-school lives and goals.

Longer term outcomes of learning

The knowledge, skills, values and competencies that will support students to become lifelong learners and active contributors to New Zealand’s social, cultural, economic and environmental wellbeing.

Greater attention to the effects of assessments

Gathering assessment data is not a self-justifying activity. What matters is that data are used in ways that benefit student learning and that feedback highlights the importance of building on strengths and experiencing success.

Schooling as partnership

Strengthening home–school partnerships by making parents more aware of intended learning, their children’s progress and priorities for progress. The flow of information should be two-way.

Standards and progressions

The development of rich descriptions of progress over time (progressions) and clearly defined indicators of achievement relative to different stages of learning.

Assessment processes are educative

A diverse evidence base for reporting standards and progressions, with multiple sources of evidence that allow for rich interpretations and a proper basis for valid judgements and decisions.

Agencies and schools as adaptive learning systems

Open and trusting knowledge-based management strategies that use relevant, usable feedback on performance and access to dependable long-term data.

(Absolum et al., 2009, pp. 7–9)

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This analysis, which resulted in 15 directions/recommendations, showed that achieving the overarching goal of DANZ would be contingent on alignments at every level of the system (see Absolum et al., 2009, Appendix 1).

The DANZ directions/recommendations are deliberately broad conceptual statements that derive from more detailed commentary within the DANZ paper. They point to where developments in policy and practice are needed at various levels of the system. The writers argued that the realisation of the vision is contingent on each of these developments being promoted, progressed and brought to fruition. They represent change, and it is expected that meaningful, widely accepted, deep change will take time—but not an eternity.

For the purposes of this commentary, I address five areas of critical concern to the realisation of the DANZ vision: the positioning of DANZ in national policy on assessment; learning and assessment; curriculum and assessment; professional development in assessment; and system alignment in both policy and practice.

Positioning DANZ in national policyIn the Ministry of Education’s foreword to DANZ, it notes that the paper will feed into their process of designing new and improved policies and strategies in assessment. It also notes that the “ideas and proposals in this paper are the views of the writers” (which legitimates distancing from any controversial substance). The same, of course, applies to the ideas that the Ministry of Education itself formulates in its policies and strategies (they are often the ideas of Ministry of Education people). All parties who engage in proposing directions for assessment form their ideas from their respective selections and interpretations of knowledge, literature, advice, policy and practice, and through the particular lenses through which they see the purposes and processes of assessment, teaching, learning and curriculum. Invariably, policy making becomes a matter of attempting to strike a balance between what Jones (2009) describes as a knowledge-driven rationale and the politics of legitimisation. According to Jones, knowledge-driven rationale views the link between knowledge and policy

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as essentially a knowledge-driven relationship. Knowledge is seen as providing instrumentally useful and essentially “neutral” inputs that serve to improve policy, and policy making works in “problem-solving” mode, according to logic and reason. The politics of legitimisation argue that power is infused throughout the knowledge process, from generation to uptake. Preferred knowledge will often reflect and sustain existing power structures, and is used in the policy processes of contest, negotiation, legitimisation and marginalisation.

In September 2010 the Ministry of Education published its Position Paper: Assessment in which it outlined its vision for assessment and described what it believes the assessment landscape should look like “if assessment is to be used effectively to promote system-wide improvement within, and across, all layers of the schooling system” (Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 4). The extent of crossover from DANZ into the position paper follows as a point of particular interest, recognising that the position paper is intended as a high-level paper to sit above policy:

It will inform and direct policy review and development relevant to assessment, raising student achievement and system-wide improvement. It is not a strategy or a policy statement. It does not describe in detail how to achieve the ideal assessment landscape. (Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 4)

Whether the position paper indeed proves to be “high level” will depend on policy and strategy being developed and implemented to demonstrably high levels of consistency with the position it espouses.

Unlike DANZ, with its vision focused squarely on student assessment capability and directions channelled towards that vision, the Ministry of Education position paper gives a broad and inclusive “system” view, giving ample space to current government policy (e.g., National Standards) and a range of information including, but not limited to, advice given in DANZ and the review papers that contributed to it. A concern, therefore, is whether the aspirations of the long-range vision and the breadth of the landscape accommodated in the “position” will have the effect of dampening or diluting the realisation of the prior goal advised by DANZ. However, this is not to suggest that the “spirit” of DANZ is absent from the Ministry of Education position on assessment. Far from it. In seeking



“an environment which values the contributions of all participants” it sets out some key principles that should be modelled from the Ministry of Education and other agencies throughout the schooling sector:

• Thestudentisatthecentre.• Thecurriculumunderpinsassessment.• Buildingassessmentcapabilityiscrucialtoachievingimprovement.• Anassessmentcapablesystemisanaccountablesystem.• A range of evidence drawn from multiple sources potentially

enables a more accurate response.• Effective assessment is reliant on quality interactions and

relationships. (Ministry of Education, 2010, pp. 4–5)

These clearly resonate with the DANZ vision and the premises upon which it is based.

Overall, I think that the Ministry of Education’s position paper reassuringly affirms much of established and emerging good assessment thought and practice in New Zealand, and errs towards the bright side on the timid-to-brave continuum in its resolve to commit to realising the DANZ vision. Thus we need to guard against the risk of losing the DANZ focus as has been indicated during my informal inquiries that sought interpretations of the position paper from a group of senior school-based leaders:

“It’s peppered with the Ministry’s mindset on National Standards.”

“There’s not a lot that’s new in this.”

“It’s good to see that the New Zealand Curriculum has a strong place.”

“As to be expected, there’s the usual Ministry academic jargon that won’t be followed by most of us (assessment as inquiry, decision-making, adaptation,

transformation). Why not stick to gather information, analyse, use?”

“Achieving this will depend on a lot of investment in professional learning and learning in the agencies and the community, and getting everyone on the same song sheet. That could take a very long time.”

What interests and concerns me from these and similar comments from my inquiries is that no one has identified or offered comment on the direction

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towards assessment-capable students, despite this being included in the position paper to the point of repeating what is stated in DANZ:

All students should be educated in ways that develop their assessment capability within and across all learning contexts. Assessment capable students are able to actively participate in assessing their own learning, recognise important moments of personal learning, and make ‘what next’ decisions. (Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 25)

If DANZ is to be realised it will be necessary to quite deliberately extrapolate its directions from position to the status of policy, and policy to the status of strategy. Otherwise, there can be little cause for confidence that the DANZ vision will reach its intended impact on student learning as a system-wide priority and major advance in assessment practice.

Learning and assessmentDANZ is premised on the reciprocal relationship between learning and assessment, making it clear that the purpose of assessment is to serve learning. Too often learning is perceived of as a linear process with assessment gauging that linearity in terms of progressions. However, what we know about learning suggests that it is not as uncomplicated or entirely teacher-dependent as some policy makers might claim:

• Learningisintellectual,and social, cultural and emotional.• Learningisdiverseanddifferentforeachindividual.• Learningtakestime.• Learningislinearand erratic, and can be temporary or permanent,

surface or deep.• Learningiscontextrelatedandmayormaynotbegeneralisable

from one context to another.• Learninghappensbydesignand by chance.• Learning happens in schools and homes, workplaces, clubs,

communities, societies.• Learningisactiveandconsciousratherthanpassive.• Learninggoesonthroughoutlife—regardless!

(See Stoll, Fink, & Earl, 2003, pp. 24–40)



An insightful understanding of the effect that the interplay among these variables can have on measures of student progress and achievement should not be underestimated. Indeed, it should lead us to have less faith in the dependability of accounts of progress based on curricular formulations of progression than might be claimed. This is not to deny that identifying progress is a critical function in the assessment of (and for) learning. However, the challenge before us is to better understand and describe how progress can be determined and reported. DANZ draws attention to this, noting that the shortage of good examples of progressions (local or international) requires both research and the professional deliberations of teachers and school leaders to address the problem. It is not sufficient for one party (researchers, “experts” or practitioners) to do this alone. It requires a high level of collaborative investigation, exploration and agreement, accepting that even when such endeavour leads to particular representations of progression, professionals will nonetheless continue to make their own interpretations of them, which is not necessarily a bad thing:

Research shows that effective teachers adapt information from experts when they feel it is necessary. In one study, for example, highly effective teachers were distinguished from less-effective teachers by their insistence on modifying researchers’ recommendations when, in their judgment, the research findings did not quite fit their classroom situation. (Duffy, 2007, p. 580)

Duffy’s advice is good: the essential professional task is not to insist that teachers follow research-based practices to the letter. After all, there is seldom neutrality in the work and claims of experts. They, too, are invariably situated in theory, politics, culture, group dynamics, history, power and context. Rather, I see this as a matter of putting teachers in a position to critically review and adapt research-based practices to their particular situations.

While descriptions of progression are considered important for improving the quality of reporting, they are just as important for the ongoing interaction of teaching and learning, and for strengthening the role that assessment plays in supporting this, particularly the attention given to feedback. If feedback is to be effective, both teacher and student need to have a clear sense of the direction in which learning should proceed, particularly since assessment for learning is the “process of seeking and

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interpreting evidence for use by students and their teachers, to identify where the students are in their learning, where they need to go to and how best to get there” (Stobart, 2008, p. 146).

Assessment for learning embeds assessment in the process of learning, and is characterised by “deceptively simple” key factors such as the active involvement of students in their own learning, the provision of effective feedback to students, adjusting teaching to take account of the results of assessment and the need for pupils to be able to assess themselves (Stobart, 2008, pp. 145–146). Well-conceived statements of progression would do much to enhance this process by providing a basis for accurate, descriptive feedback relative to the student’s point of learning. Moreover, they would help to mediate what Sadler (1989, p. 127) refers to as “exclusive reliance on teachers’ guild knowledge” which may work for or against the interests of students’ learning.

Curriculum and assessmentBoth DANZ and the Ministry of Education Position Paper: Assessment (2010) affirm the nature and practice of assessment as it is described in The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007). There is wide support for the two overarching and connected domains of the curriculum: learning for knowledge and skills (the learning areas) and learning for learning and living (values and key competencies). Clearly, the reference points for student learning should be the content of the domains, which in turn should be the reference points for assessment of learning. However, as DANZ notes, some of the assumptions underpinning the national curriculum, particularly those relating to levels and achievement objectives, need to be contested:

Analyses show that, by and large, the achievement objectives do not provide a sufficiently clear basis for discriminating levels of achievement or judging learning progress. (Absolum et al., 2009, p. 13)

Some would further argue that it is more than simply a matter of clarity. It is also a matter of validity. Is there, for example, justification for positioning an objective at one level and not another in terms of actual progressions of learning? Is there sufficient evidence to substantiate such



decisions? These and similar questions, including the choice of curricular constructs used in some areas of learning, require open investigation if we are to have confidence in the usefulness of levels-based curriculum objectives for assessment purposes.

There is, of course, a dilemma. On the one hand there is a call for greater specificity in order to clarify and universalise the “steps” to be followed for advancing learning from one stage to the next, even though we know that learning does not always follow a steady, sequential upward trajectory:

… making explicit what is to be learned, and the accompanying success criteria, risks falling off to the other side of the tightrope. The pull here is towards increasingly detailed learning objectives, which specify the required achievement and which are announced rather than negotiated. This explains my preference for learning intentions, since they convey a sense of both flexibility and breadth. This is important to the spirit of AfL (Assessment for Learning), as it may be necessary to abandon a lesson plan to achieve these broader aims. (Stobart, 2008, p. 156)

On the other hand, as Stobart suggests, it is believed that curriculum-referenced learning expectations (objectives, criteria etc.) should be stated in ways that allow some flexibility in their interpretation with regard to the performance of individual students. This is recognised to some extent in the Ministry of Education’s position paper on assessment in noting the importance of catering for diverse learners in our education system, and acknowledging that progress will not look the same for all students:

There is a need to be responsive to individual student and community context … there are varying learning dispositions and preferences and differing educational needs. Progress does not look the same for all students. (Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 4)

Interpretation of this position could go one of two ways: (a) some students’ progress will “look” faster or slower than other students’, or (b) what counts as progress for some students will look different from what counts as progress for other students. To add to the interpretative challenges, it seems that there may also be issues of internal coherence in standards from which learning and progress are to be judged:

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There is likely to be some variation in level of achievement across the range of skills, knowledge and understanding expected by any given standard. No one tool, task, activity, learning conversation or observation will be able to fully provide the information needed across all dimensions of each standard. (Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 16)

It is clear from the foregoing that strengthening the assessment capability of not only students, but everyone else who contributes one way or another to student learning and progress, will require considerable work to address curricular issues and ambiguities around descriptions of learning expectations and progression.

Professional learning and assessmentAs Wiggins commented some time ago, “Good teaching is inseparable from good assessing” (1992, p. 32). I note that the final word in this truism is a verb, not a noun! It concerns a process of gathering information about the student’s learning relative to the curricular goals for that student, interpreting the information, and using it to further the student’s learning and progress. DANZ advances the process by placing the student at the centre of the process. The implications are that the students will know their curricular goals while they are being pursued, they will have suitable reference points for making judgements about how their learning is progressing and they will understand what they have to do in order to move forward with their learning, including what support they might need. These conditions are consistent with Sadler’s premise:

A key premise is that for students to be able to improve, they must develop the capacity to monitor the quality of their own work during actual production. This in turn requires that students possess an appreciation of what high quality work is, that they have the evaluative skill necessary for them to compare with some objectivity the quality of what they are doing in relation to the higher standard, and that they develop a store of tactics or moves which can be drawn upon to modify their own performance. (Sadler, 1989, p. 119)

However, the direction proffered by DANZ is certainly not that students should be expected to follow such processes on their own. Regardless of their stage of learning, they will require the support of quality feedback, guidance and encouragement. It will not usually be sufficient



to leave them alone with full responsibility to “self-assess”. It is a shared responsibility, with the teacher in particular, but not alone, having an inescapable part in the process. Thus, the prime direction of DANZ is “strengthening the assessment capability of students by enhancing the assessment capabilities of teachers, school leaders, parents, and those who support them” (Absolum et al., 2009, p. 6, emphasis added), a view that is clearly supported in the Ministry of Education position:

Effective assessment requires a significant step up in assessment capability across the sector. All involved (students, parents and whänau, teachers, school leaders, boards of trustees, the wider assessment community, and sector agency officials) need to be assessment capable. (Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 19)

People who have well-developed assessment capability are “able and motivated to access, interpret and use information from quality assessment in ways that affirm or further their learning” (Absolum et al., 2009, p. 5). For teachers, this capability requires an interweaving of assessment, curriculum and pedagogical knowledge throughout their day-to-day teaching–learning interactions with students.

Recognising the value of and committing to practice that gives centrality to student engagement in the assessment process will undoubtedly present new and additional challenges for many. We know from various initiatives introduced at system level (see, for example, O’Brien, 2002) that teachers do not easily take on “paradigm shifts” and seldom “reinvent” themselves:

The history of the New Basics Trial reinforces key lessons about change. Desired changes will not be achieved piece by piece, facet by facet, fiat by fiat. A change does not start at the moment of innovation. New innovations and change agents are related to, and build upon, a history of old ones. Change is set within, and is accommodated to, the micro-political history of the institutions—typically a history of conflict rather than the technical and consensual process that so many organisational theorists portray. (The New Basics Research Report, 2004, p. 7)

The New Zealand system would do well to understand this. Deep and sustained change in practice takes time, and it demands that teachers believe in the merits of the change. Attempts to mandate or impose

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change from the top too often meet with counterproductive resistance that stultifies or cancels the prospects for system-wide advancement in a desired direction:

Top-down approaches often begin and end with changed educational policies while schools continue on their merry way, largely oblivious to policy changes. Or when schools are not wholly oblivious to policy changes they engage in forms of adaptation that give the illusion of change but do not constitute its reality. The idea that policy can be prescribed from on high, issued ex-cathedra, and lead to improved outcomes, is delusionary. (Eisner, 2003, p. 650)

Productive change emerges from bottom-up initiatives as much as it might from the top down. It requires excellent leadership at every level and, most important, the availability and modelling of realistic, practical and credible strategies from those charged with leading professional learning and development. This is a major hurdle that needs to be surmounted if the DANZ vision is to be realised. To achieve this requires recognition and acceptance of the complexity of teachers’ work, the teaching environment and the sheer number and individual differences of students for whom they would be developing assessment capability and participation.

System alignmentStrategies such as those proposed in DANZ need to consider how the system exercises its influence and direction over the environment in which teaching and learning take place. The Ministry of Education advises and influences policies of the Government. External reviews conducted by the Education Review Office emphasise the Government’s policy priorities. The manufacture and presentation of summative data (read as “numbers”) is urged by the New Zealand School Trustees Association, with plenty of encouragement from the Ministry of Education. All of these influences serve as determinants, for better or worse, over how assessment is exercised within schools. Moreover, in our self-managing schooling system the regulatory framework permits some school-level discretion over how requirements can be interpreted in practice. Consequently there is a variety of interpretations and much variation in the quality of assessment and the evidence of student learning and progress that it produces.



Given that regulation (National Education Guidelines) has a significant force of persuasion at all levels, from external audit agendas through to school-level policy and practice, DANZ advises that this should be the pivotal reference for legitimating and promoting expectations of quality assessment practice that benefits teaching and learning, and produces dependable and useful information.

It is essential that the National Education Guidelines provide greater guidance on what constitutes quality assessment and reporting practice. It is my recommendation that the revised guidelines include the following assessment-related requirements, as specified in DANZ:

• that schools support all students to develop the ability anddisposition to access, interpret, and use information from quality assessments in ways that affirm or further their learning.

• thatschoolsevaluatetheirassessmentpracticeonthebasisofthequality of the evidence used, the interpretations made, and the effectiveness in terms of student outcomes of actions taken.

• that schoolscommunicateeffectivelywithparents/whänauabouttheir children’s learning, including how that learning relates to national standards. (Absolum et al., 2009, p. 38)

Unless this advice is followed, there can be little confidence of achieving the needed momentum towards the realisation of improvements in assessment practice that will significantly benefit both teaching and learning. Leading the system towards an improved assessment strategy requires alignment at every level so that all parts work together to bring the strategy to fruition. To achieve this we need to better align regulation with our beliefs about good assessment policy and practice. We need to better invest in effective development of expertise at all levels of the sector, and we need to commit to monitoring the extent to which we are achieving intended directions.

ConclusionDANZ proposes a vision and a way forward for designing new and improved policies and strategies that place the student at the centre of the process and develop capability at every level of the system, classroom to

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government offices, where all participants are able and motivated to access, interpret and use information from quality assessments in ways that affirm or further learning. In placing students at the centre of assessment practice, the proposals are consistent with the best of current thinking, including that behind assessment for learning, the use of assessment feedback to enhance teaching and learning, and professional learning designed to assist teachers to enhance their students’ assessment capabilities.

The direction in DANZ received encouraging support in feedback from national and international reviews commissioned by the Ministry of Education:

The plan and the vision it advances are outstanding. It almost seems presumptuous of me to comment further. In my presentations, I already have begun to hold it up as an example of excellence in contrast to the narrow and ineffective assessment vision that has dominated for decades in the United States. I have been taking the liberty of reading the first three paragraphs of the Overview in my speeches and workshops. I congratulate the team that assembled it and can only hope that, some day, we can have one of our own. I am optimistic even though our policymakers, school leaders, and practitioners have so much to learn. (Review feedback on DANZ. Rick Stiggins, Educational Testing Service Assessment Training Institute, Portland, Oregon, USA, personal communication, 2008.)

There are also words of caution:What this means in policy and practice may be a stretch for most—both stakeholders (including the students and their families) and educationalists alike (including other academics with expertise in assessment). (Review feedback on DANZ. Luanna Meyer, Victoria University, personal communication, 3 October 2008.)

Regardless, the Ministry of Education has taken on the spirit, at least, of DANZ in its position paper on assessment:

A key feature of this [position] paper is the insistence that this reciprocal learning process should be mirrored between participants both within and between all layers of the system. It has a role to play in classroom practice, professional dialogue, school review and the development of school-based policy and practice, system monitoring and evaluation and review and development of system-wide policy and practices. (Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 4)

What is now needed is policy and strategy!



ReferencesAbsolum, M., Flockton, L., Hattie, J., Hipkins, R., & Reid, I. (2009). Directions for

Assessment in New Zealand (DANZ): Developing students’ assessment capability. Wellington: Ministry of Education. Retrieved from Te Kete Ipurangi: http://assessment.tki.org.nz/Assessment-in-the-classroom/Assessment-position-papers

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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Ministry of Education. (2010). Position paper: Assessment (Schooling Sector). Ko te whärangi takotoranga ärunga, ä te tähuhu o te mätauranga, te matekitenga. Retrieved 20 August 2011, from Ministry of Education: http://www.minedu.govt.nz/theMinistry/PublicationsAndResources/AssessmentPositionPaper.aspx

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The authorLester Flockton is a graduate of Dunedin Teachers College and the University of Otago. He has extensive experience in New Zealand’s school system as a teacher, principal, inspector of schools, Ministry of Education official, researcher, university teacher, educational thinker and leader. He was one of the founding directors of the Educational Assessment Research Unit at the University of Otago, and one of the prime developers and co-directors of New Zealand’s National Education Monitoring Project. For a number of years he has led postgraduate programmes on assessment, and leadership for learning. Lester’s field of expertise combines teaching and learning, curriculum and assessment, and the leadership, governance and management of schools.

Email: [email protected]


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