Assessment & Reporting: Shifting Focus from Grades to Growth
In my article ‘Breaking down Silos in Education’, I discussed the Bhutan Baccalaureate’s concept of Cross-Pollination. In this article, we will discuss some ways of assessing the growth of learners through Cross-Pollinated learning experiences. Before delving into how assessment is done, it is important to discuss the what and why of assessment. In the Bhutan Baccalaureate, assessment and reporting are seen as the engine that drives the Learning Process. Learners are encouraged to see growth as a process, not just a standardised test to look at their ability to demonstrate subject knowledge. The assessment process instils trust in the learners by giving them ownership of their learning, allowing them to reflect on their learning and plan the next phase of their learning process based on their own reflection and inputs from their peers, mentors and teachers
We must go to the origin of the word assessment to understand its meaning. The word assessment is made up of two pieces of the Latin language, adsedere and mentum. Adesdere means ‘to sit by’ or ‘to sit beside’ referring to the act of sitting by and supporting the office of a judge. The suffix ‘-ment’ comes from the Latin word mentum which means ‘the result of’. The word assessment referred to the process of making an informed decision as a result of analysing multiple sources of information available on a specific case. The decision needed to be shared, thereby bringing in the concept of reporting so that necessary interventions could be carried out. It is this intertwined process of assessing and reporting that contributed to the growth of individuals and societies.
The Bhutan Baccalaureate recognises that learning is multifaceted and every learner is unique, and therefore their ways of thinking and the ways they learn are also different. Thus, the ‘how’ of learning takes precedence over the ‘what’ and the assessment and reporting processes are also designed to capture the Skills, Processes and Watermarks that the learners are developing instead of only content. Assessment is an important tool, not for others but for ourselves. The Assessment process helps learners reflect on whether they are becoming better today than yesterday, bringing in a sense of ownership and responsibility and not just competitiveness. The assessment provides avenues for learners to demonstrate what they know (to whom), while also working on what they do not know so that they can continuously raise their bar. The purpose of assessment in Bhutan Baccalaureate is to help learners identify the Skills, Processes, Watermarks, and concepts that they want to develop across the Five Areas of Development. The assessment also helps teachers provide feedback and guidance to enable each learner to reach their goals by enriching the design of their learning experiences. Assessment must also help schools set their own benchmark to constantly enrich the Learning Process for the teachers and students. A cumulative assessment of a student in a Bhutan Baccalaureate school leads to a Portrait, a snapshot of their journey and achievements along with the transcripts from the standardised examinations conducted by the examination agencies that the school is affiliated with. The Portrait can be used by institutions and individuals to understand the journey of an individual.
Every learner (both students and teachers) in a Bhutan Baccalaureate is required to create a Roadmap. A Roadmap allows them to reflect on where they are at the moment and put down plans to move forward in the Five Areas of Development. For each plan, there are clearly outlined indicators of success and a timeline which keeps them on track. The indicators of success become an integral part of the assessment which allows the student, her mentor or teachers to track progress and design appropriate interventions in a timely manner. Roadmaps are created and updated on the technological platform called the motherboard, designed, and developed by Druk Gyalpo’s Institute. The motherboard also enables teachers to write their observations and feedback on any student. The tracking of indicators of success on the Roadmaps supported by the assessment inputs from teachers provides a rich source of data on each student for the mentor to help them student update their Roadmaps. Likewise, each Area of Development and Domain creates a Roadmap identifying the Skills, Processes, Watermarks and Concepts that students are expected to develop for each learning cycle (a period of approximately 2 months). For each Grade or age level, a common set of Skills, Processes and Watermarks are identified that all students need to develop in the specific learning cycle. These Skills, Processes and Watermarks complement the goals set by an individual student in her Roadmap. The assessment conducted throughout the learning cycle captures how the students are able to demonstrate this common set of skills within or across the Five Areas of Development.
Let us take the example of a learning experience where the students are learning about birds and their significance to local culture in Life Science. The focus of the learning experience is on helping students develop cerebral skills such as analysis, mathematical operations and pattern recognition, social skills such as collaboration, time management and communication and spiritual skills such as rigour and articulation. Students also learn about the natural habitats of birds and the geographical location, climate, migration patterns and the significance of birds in the culture of the local communities. The planning for this could be done by a few teachers from the life science, mathematics, and technology domains each outlining the expectations from their Domain Roadmaps. In the lesson plan, opportunities would be created for students to self-reflection, write reports or present their learning. As the students go through the learning experiences, they introspect on their growth and can upload reflections on their Roadmap. The teachers enter assessments in the form of written anecdotes, videos or photographs of the work submitted by students on the motherboard. The assessment inputs would look at how a student is demonstrating growth in the Skills, Processes and Watermarks across the Areas of Development identified in the lesson plan. Every week, the mentor would take note of the assessment inputs on a student and help her review and update her Roadmap based on the feedback.
In a learning cycle, the students also get the opportunity to showcase their learning through a 108-learning experience cycle review conducted after the completion of 180 learning experiences. During the review, the students get the opportunity to showcase their learning from the past 108 learning experiences in any format of their choice. If most of the students who were part of the learning experience on birds choose to share their learning, it is an indication that the learning experiences have made an impact. At the end of a learning cycle, there will be reviews which are either individualised or cross-pollinated to review how well the students are able to apply the Skills, Processes, and Watermarks identified for the learning cycle. Each question in the review is tagged with the Skills, Processes, Watermarks and concepts which will be analysed to generate a graphical representation along with qualitative feedback on the growth of the student. In Individualised reviews, each student gets a specific set of questions based on their progress in the learning cycle. The concepts that the students are required to learn from the curriculum are also included in the review along with the Skills, Processes and Watermarks. A cross-pollination review uses Latin Squares to generate different permutations of Skills, Processes, Watermarks and Concepts for each question to look at the application of their learning across Areas of Development. A sample of how a student’s growth can be tracked over learning cycles is shown below:
This process might seem daunting, but the use of emerging technologies such as ChatGPT and other AI extensions for Microsoft Office and Google Workspace allows analysis to be done by machines. The analysis above is generated by AI extensions on Google Workspace which also allows AI to generate a qualitative report based on the graphical representation provided the right prompts are entered. Using ChatGPT and other AI tools, the teachers can get a concise summary of the assessment inputs on a student from the motherboard which saves them the time spent reading through each assessment input to create a summary. The human interface that reads through and analyses the responses generated by technology is crucial to ensure that the patterns in the growth of a student are valid and the feedback provided is used effectively to update the Roadmaps.
The analysis of the Roadmap, assessment inputs and reports of a student over the years culminate into a Portrait, issued to students when they complete Grades 10 and 12. Portraits include the student’s narrative of their growth in a Bhutan Baccalaureate school supported by anecdotes from the teachers and mentors along with academic transcripts from external examination bodies. It provides individuals and institutions with a pattern in the growth of the student highlighting their areas of strength as well as areas that need improvement. Portraits are used by our students for admission into colleges and institutions.
In the last few years, the focus of assessment and reporting in education is starting to shift from grades and marks to highlighting the unique learning journey of each student. The International School of Geneva launched the Learner Passport in 2021 which includes measures of creativity, responsibility and citizenship. OECD’s paper on Building the Future of Education published in October 2022 highlights the need to strengthen PISA and other forms of assessment to bring about a balance between knowledge and thinking skills. India’s National Education Policy 2020 calls for reforms in assessment to bring more focus on the development of skills such as analysis, critical thinking and conceptual clarity instead of testing memorisation of content. The policy also suggests a move towards a holistic progress card that reflects the progress as well as the uniqueness of each learner. The need for a holistic report on the learners’ growth over time is also felt by higher education institutions in their admission process. In the 2023 fall admissions, about 80% of the Colleges in the United States have removed the requirement of standardised test scores for admission into four-year undergraduate courses. This has also led to schools reforming the current practices of assessment and reporting. Assessment and reporting processes must guide education systems to shift their focus from teaching students’ content alone to helping them learn the Skills, Processes and Watermarks to make informed choices in their lives.