Formative Assessment: The most

effective way to build learning

Dylan Wiliam (@dylanwiliam)

www.dylanwiliamcenter.com
 Outline: four questions
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• Why we need to raise achievement

• Why we have to focus our efforts
• Why formative assessment should be the priority
• Why formative assessment requires new models of
professional development
 Why we need to raise achievement
3

• In advanced economies, over the next 20 to 30

years
– Between a quarter and a third of jobs could be offshored
(Blinder, 2011)
– About half of all jobs could be done by machines (Frey &
Osborne, 2013)
• The choice for young people
– Wait for someone else to invent a new job for you
– Create your own
 The world of work is changing
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Which kinds of skill are disappearing fastest from the workplace?

Skill category Change 1969-1999
A Complex communication +14%
B Expert thinking/problem solving +8%
C Non-routine manual –5%
D Routine cognitive –8%
E Routine manual –3%

Autor, Levy and Murnane (2003)

 What kinds of schools do we need?

School model Ethos Key process

Talent refineries School must provide Ensuring good teaching and
opportunities for students syllabus coverage
to show what they can do

Talent incubators All students students can Drawing out what is within
learn, but not all students the student
can achieve at high levels

Talent factories All students can achieve “Whatever it takes”

at high levels
 Why every school should do pareto analysis
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• Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923)

– Economist, philosopher, and sociologist,
associated with the 80:20 rule
• Pareto improvement
– A change that can make at least one person
(e.g., a student) better off without making
anyone else (e.g., a teacher) worse off.
• Pareto efficiency/Pareto optimality
– An allocation (e.g., of resources) is Pareto efficient or Pareto
optimal when there are no more Pareto improvements
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Using research evidence

 Relevant studies
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• Fuchs & Fuchs (1986) • Nyquist (2003)

• Natriello (1987) • Brookhart (2004)
• Crooks (1988) • Allal & Lopez (2005)
• Bangert-Drowns et al. (1991) • Köller (2005)
• Dempster (1991) • Brookhart (2007)
• Dempster (1992) • Wiliam (2007)
• Elshout-Mohr (1994) • Hattie & Timperley (2007)
• Kluger & DeNisi (1996) • Shute (2008)
• Black & Wiliam (1998) • Kingston & Nash (2011, 2015)
 Formative Assessment: A contested term
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Long-cycle Medium-cycle Short-cycle

Within and Within and
Span Across terms,
between between
teaching units
teaching units lessons

Minute-by-
Length Four weeks to One to four
minute and
one year weeks
day-by-day

Monitoring, Student-
Engagement,
Impact curriculum involved
responsiveness
alignment assessment
 Unpacking Formative Assessment
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Where the learner Where the learner How to get

is going is now the learner there

Providing
Eliciting evidence feedback that
Teacher
of learning moves learners
Clarifying, forward
sharing, and
understanding Activating students as learning
Peer
learning resources for one another
intentions

Activating students as
Student
owners of their own learning
 Unpacking Formative Assessment
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Where the learner Where the learner How to get

is going is now the learner there

Teacher
Using evidence of
achievement to adapt what
Peer
happens in classrooms to
meet learner needs
Student
 An educational positioning system
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• A good teacher:
– Establishes where the students are in their learning
– Identifies the learning destination
– Carefully plans a route
– Begins the learning journey
– Makes regular checks on progress on the way
– Makes adjustments to the course as conditions dictate
 Educational Endowment Foundation toolkit
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Intervention Cost Quality of Extra months

evidence of learning
Feedback ££  +8
Metacognition and self-regulation ££  +8
Peer tutoring ££  +6
Early years intervention £££££  +6
One to one tuition ££££  +5
Homework (secondary) £  +5
Collaborative learning £  +5
Phonics £  +4
Small group tuition £££  +4
Behaviour interventions £££  +4
Digital technology ££££  +4
Social and emotional learning £  +4
 Educational Endowment Foundation toolkit
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Intervention Cost Quality of Extra months

evidence of learning
Parental involvement £££  +3
Reducing class size £££££  +3
Summer schools £££  +3
Sports participation £££  +2
Arts participation ££  +2
Extended school time £££  +2
Individualized instruction £  +2
After school programmes ££££  +2
Learning styles £  +2
Mentoring £££  +1
Homework (primary) £  +1
 Educational Endowment Foundation toolkit
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Intervention Cost Quality of Extra months

evidence of learning
Teaching assistants ££££  0
Performance pay ££  0
Aspiration interventions £££  0
Block scheduling £  0
School uniform £  0
Physical environment ££  0
Ability grouping £  -1

Educational Endowment Foundation (2015)

 Unpacking Formative Assessment
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Where the learner Where the learner How to get

is going is now the learner there

Engineering effective
discussions, tasks, Providing feedback
Teacher and activities that that moves learners
elicit evidence of forward
learning
Clarifying,
sharing, and
understanding Activating students as
Peer
learning resources for one another
intentions

Activating students as
Student
owners of their own learning
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Strategies and practical

techniques for
classroom formative
assessment
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Clarifying, sharing and

understanding learning
intentions
 Share learning intentions
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• Explain learning intentions at start of lesson/unit:

– Learning intentions
– Success criteria
• Consider providing learning intentions and success
criteria in students’ language
• Use posters of key words to talk about learning:
– E.g., describe, explain, evaluate
• Use planning and writing frames judiciously
• Use annotated examples of different standards to
“flesh out” assessment rubrics (e.g., lab reports).
• Provide opportunities for students to design their own
tests.
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Engineering effective
discussions, activities,
and classroom tasks
that elicit evidence of
learning
 Eliciting evidence
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• Key idea: questioning should

– cause thinking
– provide data that informs teaching
• Improving teacher questioning
– generating questions with colleagues
– low-order vs. high-order not closed vs. open
– appropriate wait-time
• Getting away from I-R-E (initiation-response-evaluation)
– basketball rather than serial table-tennis
– ‘No hands up’ (except to ask a question)
– ‘Hot Seat’ questioning
• All-student response systems
– ABCD cards, “show-me” boards, exit passes
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Providing feedback that

moves learners forward
 Effects of feedback
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• Kluger & DeNisi (1996) review of 3000 research reports

• Excluding those:
– without adequate controls
– with poor design
– with fewer than 10 participants
– where performance was not measured
– without details of effect sizes
• left 131 reports, 607 effect sizes, involving 12652 individuals
• On average, feedback increases achievement
– Effect sizes highly variable
– 38% (231 out of 607) of effect sizes were negative
 Getting feedback right is hard
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Response type Feedback indicates performance…

falls short of goal exceeds goal

Change behavior Increase effort Exert less effort

Change goal Reduce aspiration Increase aspiration

Abandon goal Decide goal is too hard Decide goal is too easy

Reject feedback Feedback is ignored Feedback is ignored

 Provide feedback that moves learning on
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• Key idea: feedback should:

– Cause thinking
– Provide guidance on how to improve
• Comment-only marking
• Focused marking
• Explicit reference to mark-schemes/rubrics
• Suggestions on how to improve:
– Not giving complete solutions
• Re-timing assessment:
– E.g., three-fourths-of-the-way-through-a-unit test
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Activating students
as learning resources
for one another
 Help students be learning resources
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• Students assessing their peers’ work:

– “Pre-flight checklist”
– “Two stars and a wish”
– Choose-swap-choose
– Daily sign-in
• Training students to pose questions/identifying
group weaknesses
• End-of-lesson students’ review
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Activating students
as owners of their
own learning
 Help students own their own learning
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• Students assessing their own work:

– With rubrics
– With exemplars
• Self-assessment of understanding:
– Learning portfolio
– Traffic lights
– Red/green discs
– Coloured cups
– Plus/minus/interesting
So much for
the easy bit
 A model for teacher learning
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• Content, then process

• Content (what we want teachers to change):
– Evidence
– Ideas (strategies and techniques)
• Process (how to go about change):
– Choice
– Flexibility
– Small steps
– Accountability
– Support
 Supportive accountability
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• What is needed from teachers:

– A commitment to:
• The continual improvement of practice
• Focus on those things that make a difference to students
• What is needed from leaders:
– A commitment to engineer effective learning
environments for teachers by:
• Creating expectations for continually improving practice
• Keeping the focus on the things that make a difference to
students
• Providing the time, space, dispensation, and support for
innovation
• Supporting risk-taking
 To find out more…
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www.dylanwiliam.net

www.dylanwiliamcenter.com