Evidence-Based Collaboration
Anthony Reibel - Director of Assessment, Research, and Evaluation
This is a guide to support our curricular teams in effective evidence-based collaboration:
Always ask, “What’s our purpose of collaborating with the evidence?” Teams meet for three purposes only; to dialogue about student learning, to discuss student learning or to make decisions about student learning (Twadell & Erkins 2012). Dialoging about student learning is simply reviewing and commenting on student data or information. Discussing is more like brainstorming about how to move forward to promote or supporting student learning. And making decisions is the commitment to follow an action plan about student learning and elaborate on its effects.
Perform In-The-Moment humility: It is important that teams build trust. But building trust can’t happen without one key element In-The-Moment Humility. From his text “Humble Inquiry” Edgar H. Schein defines this as regarding one’s own status as equal to someone else’s status to accomplish a task or goal. The goal in every school is “success for every student” therefore we all must come to the collaborative table with the student in mind not ourselves.
Engage around the question of ‘How Well’: Engaging around the question of “What do we want students to know?” only gets us so far. To help teams focus on student proficiency or mastery the question of “How well a student must learn or master a skill or content area?” is a better starting place for collaboration.
Constantly ask, “Do we have enough of the right evidence for this standard?” Interacting with this question is essential to understanding not only your quality and effectiveness of your assessments but it also keeps student proficiency in the center of the conversation. Assessments are events that provide evidence for the professional interpretation (teacher) of student learning. Assessments that don’t yield plentiful evidence of the learning within a particular standard orstandards should be reviewed and redeveloped.
Set A Growth Focus: Teams should avoid using evidence to set threshold goals, such as “80% of students will be proficient in this skill.” Instead they should set growth goals. A growth goal acts not as a threshold to be crossed but a personalized trajectory of learning. A growth goal sounds something like this “80% of students will increase their level of proficiency one gradation on the proficiency scale by the end of the year.”
Can, Can’t and Won’t: The evidence from assessment events will highlight one of three profiles of learning; a student who can, a student who can’t and a student who won’t. All three of these profiles must be handled differently, but starting with them is key to quality collaborative discussions about student learning. A CAN student is a student who is meeting the proficiency standards, a CAN’T student is a student who is providing evidence, but is not meeting proficiency, and finally a student who WON’T is s student who is not providing evidence for reasons such as insubordination or other social-emotional reasons.
Always ask, “What’s our purpose of collaborating with the evidence?” Teams meet for three purposes only; to dialogue about student learning, to discuss student learning or to make decisions about student learning (Twadell & Erkins 2012). Dialoging about student learning is simply reviewing and commenting on student data or information. Discussing is more like brainstorming about how to move forward to promote or supporting student learning. And making decisions is the commitment to follow an action plan about student learning and elaborate on its effects.
Perform In-The-Moment humility: It is important that teams build trust. But building trust can’t happen without one key element In-The-Moment Humility. From his text “Humble Inquiry” Edgar H. Schein defines this as regarding one’s own status as equal to someone else’s status to accomplish a task or goal. The goal in every school is “success for every student” therefore we all must come to the collaborative table with the student in mind not ourselves.
Engage around the question of ‘How Well’: Engaging around the question of “What do we want students to know?” only gets us so far. To help teams focus on student proficiency or mastery the question of “How well a student must learn or master a skill or content area?” is a better starting place for collaboration.
Constantly ask, “Do we have enough of the right evidence for this standard?” Interacting with this question is essential to understanding not only your quality and effectiveness of your assessments but it also keeps student proficiency in the center of the conversation. Assessments are events that provide evidence for the professional interpretation (teacher) of student learning. Assessments that don’t yield plentiful evidence of the learning within a particular standard orstandards should be reviewed and redeveloped.
Set A Growth Focus: Teams should avoid using evidence to set threshold goals, such as “80% of students will be proficient in this skill.” Instead they should set growth goals. A growth goal acts not as a threshold to be crossed but a personalized trajectory of learning. A growth goal sounds something like this “80% of students will increase their level of proficiency one gradation on the proficiency scale by the end of the year.”
Can, Can’t and Won’t: The evidence from assessment events will highlight one of three profiles of learning; a student who can, a student who can’t and a student who won’t. All three of these profiles must be handled differently, but starting with them is key to quality collaborative discussions about student learning. A CAN student is a student who is meeting the proficiency standards, a CAN’T student is a student who is providing evidence, but is not meeting proficiency, and finally a student who WON’T is s student who is not providing evidence for reasons such as insubordination or other social-emotional reasons.