From January to March 2019, teachers from Juying Secondary School presented their applied learning from their small group advisement with NIE faculty to participants in the Management and Leadership in School (MLS) programme, at the elective on Leading Assessment Feedback. The cases of teacher practice illustrate what can be done as part of feedback practice with regard to interpreting and acting on the evidence of students’ work.

The practices included:

1. isolating and structuring performance to help students notice the sub-components in the question so that they can identify their gaps and work on one aspect at a time;

2. addressing conceptual challenges using intermediate scaffolding such as a cline and/or other visual representations to help students access the epistemological structure of knowledge; and

3. making transfer visible through the use of checklists and/or sentence frames for process transfer and the design of a follow-up task to close the feedback loop.

Math classroom

Zhi Wen demonstrated how he had used a table with rows and columns to show students the sub-components of a question involving solving quadratic equations graphically. He also developed a process checklist to feed-up and guide students in looking back.

Science classroom

Clive addressed the conceptual challenges his students had in understanding the abstract concepts of energy transformation by redesigning explanation-type questions with intermediate sub-questions. He also designed parallel tasks without scaffolding to assess their learning.

English classroom

Cheng Ling explained how she and her colleague, Tricia, had used a swing technique to make visible the counter argument and rebuttal argumentative structure as well as sentence frames to make visible the language demands of an argument to students in the English classroom.

History classroom

The MLS participants consulted Sonia on her use of a table to illustrate to students in her History class the components required in their answers and her use of a number scale to get students to weigh the importance of factors in an argument.

In 2019, Chua Chu Kang Primary School started a task force to address issues centred on classroom assessment. They began by exploring three issues of concern: non-reporting of marks in Primary 1 and 2, use of rubrics to prepare students for high stakes examination, and Edusave criteria based on learning dispositions. Their deliberation enabled them to articulate the issues with greater clarity, and over the course of time, it led them to design and redesign units of work and assessment to test assessment principles against real problems in the classroom.

The teachers were invited to share the changes in their assessment practices with participants from the Management and Leadership in School (MLS) programme, at the elective on Leading Assessment Feedback Practices in School. Before their presentation, descriptions of their before-practice and assessment issues were posted on Blackboard Forum Discussion Board to have the MLS participants offer advice for improvement. This allowed the presenting teachers to receive feedback and the participants were also able to see how their suggestions matched up against the after-practice that was enacted. During the presentations, the teachers also shared how they had continued to hone their assessment practice across other units of work and participants were able to better connect assessment theory with practice through the assessment artefacts and evidence of student work.

English classroom

1 Aug: Mdm Sarina bte Mohamed presented the shift towards a more student-focused feedback in the English classroom that involved identifying and bridging of learning gaps, focused actionable feedback, and promoting independent learning.

1 Aug: During the middle-hour consultation in the MLS elective, participants tapped on the expertise of Mrs Sheree Chong (Principal) to better understand the structural changes that were put in place to support assessment change in school.

Mother Tongue classroom

19 Aug: Mr Tay Choon Hong (Senior Teacher) presented the change in feedback practice in the MTL classrooms that drew on three key principles: practise positive feedback, downsize the improvement, and practise more independence.

Math classroom

22 Aug: Mdm Azean bte Abdullah (Senior Teacher) presented examples of redesigned mathematics worksheets to illustrate several assessment principles that informed practice: build confidence through early and easy success by differentiating worksheets according to students’ ability, breaking down a complex problem to its constituent parts in order to identify and bridge learning gaps, and promote independent learning through minimal, but targeted feedback in marking.

Science classroom

31 Oct: Mdm Teo Guat Soon (Senior Teacher) described a more efficacious process of giving feedback on students’ work. It hinged on the redesign of science worksheets that allowed space for students to write a refined answer after the whole class discussion to identify the wrong use of terms and/or lack of conceptual reasoning by examining exemplars of student answers from the first attempt.

The case of Chua Chu Kang Primary School is an illustrative example of assessment reform made possible by strong leadership and teachers’ deliberation on assessment principles and practice. It offers ideas for more impactful teacher professional development that is focused on learning and applying an assessment change for small scale impact and examining evidence of efficacy to inform future practice.