John Hattie to run workshops on e-asTTle and national standards

Faculty of Education Professor John Hattie and the Visible Learning Lab at The University of Auckland will run national standards workshops for teachers in 2010.

Professor Hattie and his colleagues Debra Masters and Julie Schumacher from the Visible Learning Lab will run the workshops in ten centres from Auckland to Invercargill. The seminars will assist schools to better understand how to implement national standards, and will demonstrate how e-asTTle and other tools can be used alongside the standards to help students, schools and parents understand progress in learning.

Professor Hattie and the Visible Learning Lab team have an extensive background in setting standards, moderation, and assessment informed teaching and learning. The team developed asTTle (Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning) in partnership with teachers. AsTTle is an assessment tool used by teachers to show what level students are at in the New Zealand Curriculum, and what their next learning steps are. An online version called e-asTTle was also recently made available.

“Knowing about progress in student learning is a key part of effective teaching. AsTTle has been built to make that learning process more visible to teachers. The national standards will be able to do that too – but only if they are used as part of teaching and learning and not just to report student information to the Government or for creating league tables,” Professor Hattie says.

“To get the very best out of national standards they need to be used to help students to learn. They can help to provide a shared language of learning within and between schools, and having a common language for understanding progress is a fundamental skill that teachers and schools need to have.”

Professor Hattie and his team want to work with schools to get the very best out of the standards, so they become an important part of the language of the school, rather than a means to report to parents, the Board and the Ministry.

“Reporting results is important – but it’s not as important as using the standards with the students to enhance teaching and learning,” Professor Hattie says.

The Visible Learning Lab workshops will provide schools with the tools to understand what standards and the levels of progress actually look like, and how to use assessment to inform teacher and school judgements.

“With these skills and some simple knowledge of measurement, the Lab aims to increase teacher confidence and competence in working effectively with the national standards. There needs to be a lot of work done to bring teachers on-board with the true power of national standards as a teaching and learning tool,” Ms Masters says.

For more information on the workshops please visit www.visiblelearning.co.nz