Improving Learning in Secondary Schools (PDF)

Improving Learning in Secondary Schools brings together, in a succinct, comprehensive and thought-provoking manner, several dimensions of classroom assessment feedback in one volume. It is based on the principle that students need feedback on their work and conduct at school in order to be able to correct misconceptions and omissions that can render them incapable of making progress and learning in a given subject. The book reports on a doctoral study that examined teachers' feedback practice and its relation to student learning in secondary schools. It presents a critical, fine-grained classification and analysis of positive, neutral and negative feedback categories in teacher talk and writing, which could generate a globally-applicable typology and theory of classroom feedback. For some time now, formative assessment-generated feedback has been widely recommended for classrooms thanks mainly to compelling research-based evidence showing the relative merits of formative assessment types over more traditional summative assessment practices. In this book, it is suggested that the time has come to depart from such arguments because the mere presence of feedback in teacher talk and writing, be it formative or summative, is not enough to support learning. Feedback, like formal and informal instruction and assessment, is not mediated in vacuo; it is a social process taking place in a social setting, conducted by, on, and for social actors. One must also consider the context, especially the linguistic and socio-cultural environment, in which assessment, feedback and learning occur, but which also acts as a barrier and facilitator to successful feedback provision and uptake. This argument should constitute a starting point for reflection, debate and research into the effectiveness for learning of classroom assessment feedback. Therefore, whilst complementing previous work on this subject, this book makes significant additions to a very important aspect of school life. Primary and secondary school teachers, university students, academics and researchers as well as educationists and policy makers in the domain of educational assessment will find in it an inseparable companion and resource tool.