Read all about inquiry through the lens of one of the world's leading experts in the area.
As leaders, we often feel tension around assessment. How do we balance meeting external metrics and requirements while staying aligned to our schools’ values and beliefs about how students learn best? In this masterclass of a podcast, Trevor Mackenzie shares stories and strategies for keeping students and learning at the center of our assessment practices. We focus on your role as a leader to model and cultivate a culture of assessment.
An image only takes us so far. The application and implementation within, the balance and process we engage in, the agency and responsiveness demanded, none of it can be encompassed in a single image. But the traction we observed and the work that was done after this process was introduced cannot be ignored.
Recently I spent a week at one of my partner schools, ISM in Manila. it was a joy to finally connect with colleagues f2f, to see teaching and learning in action, and to get a truer sense of the culture of the school. How I spent my time across the week was diverse. I co-planned lessons with teachers. I co-taught lessons with teachers. I led workshops for the entire high school staff. I led workshops for the leadership team. I facilitated listening conversations with three groups of stakeholders: students, parents, and teachers. And I spent a lot of time with my close colleague Sarah Tudge, HS Curriculum Coordinator at ISM. The entire week was richly informative, inspiring, and productive.
Recently I collaborated with colleague and author of Leading with a Lens of Inquiry Jessica Vance on a resource to help cultivate moves, decisions, and responses in schools that are founded in curiosity. In our work with schools supporting them in implementing inquiry, curiosity is of critical importance. We often say that if we want curious kids, we need curious adults. In the face of the many decisions teachers make in a given day, we sat down and thought about how we could create some reflective space to make decisions rooted in curiosity.
I am incredibly grateful for this little interview from my alma mater and partner in learning, the University of Victoria. Have a read of the full piece here.
I know that is a sassy title for a post, but when it comes to assessment and propelling student growth, doing less to get more is foundational.
Recently I was facilitating a conversation about 10 Student-Centred Assessment Beliefs, chapter 1 from Inquiry Mindset Assessment Edition. All of the chapters from my publications are mini workshops, aimed to get teachers thinking, planning, and taking action towards a more student-centred learning experience. This chapter is no different.
The British Columbia Ministry of Education recently released the BC K-12 Assessment Policy Framework. It provides the foundation for assessing and reporting to their redesigned curriculum, launched in 2016. It is roughly 80 pages and outlines an assessment direction that is founded on best practice, decades of research on how to nurture student growth and skill development, and is beautifully aligned with Inquiry Mindset Assessment Edition.
We all strive for balance. We seek a return on investment for our efforts that feels rewarding, that justifies the means, and that helps us see the benefit in the decisions we make. In education, once we feel have found a balance from our efforts, it is incredibly challenging to stray away from the design of our decisions. We have been looking for the most nourishing fruits from our labours and once we have found a path we tend to stick to that same path until something comes along to really motivate us to do something different.
Each term I sit with students and write reports cards with them. I schedule in a bit of time with each learner and we discuss their evidence of learning, their experiences in inquiry, their strengths and stretches, any challenges they faced and strategies they utilized to overcome these challenges.
We set goals.
We discuss progress.
And we do it all together.
