Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice

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Student engagement and student self‐assessment:

the REAL framework

Geoff Munns & Helen Woodward

To cite this article: Geoff Munns & Helen Woodward (2006) Student engagement and student
self‐assessment: the REAL framework, Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice,
13:2, 193-213, DOI: 10.1080/09695940600703969

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Assessment in Education
Vol. 13, No. 2, July 2006, pp. 193–213

Student engagement and student

self-assessment: the REAL framework
Geoff Munns* and Helen Woodward
University of Western Sydney, Australia
Assessment
10.1080/09695940600703969
CAIE_A_170364.sgm
0969-594X
Original
Taylor
202006
13
[email protected]
GeoffMunns
00000July
and
&Article
Francis
Francis
(print)/1465-329X
2006
in Education
Ltd (online)

This article explores the relationship between student engagement and student self-assessment. It
reports on research that has reconceptualised ways of understanding levels of student engagement
among primary school learners who live in poor communities. These ways of understanding have
been influential in the development of a student self-assessment framework. This framework is
presented in the article, as well as a description of its evolution and how it is used within classrooms
involved in the research.

Introduction
This article proposes that there are strong theoretical and practical connections
between student engagement and student self-assessment. That is, deeper levels of
student self-assessment are critical aspects of pedagogical processes aiming to encour-
age students to be substantively engaged in their classroom learning experiences. This
link between student engagement and student self-assessment is being explored in the
Fair Go Project, action research into student engagement among low SES primary
school students in Sydney’s south-west. Drawing primarily on work within the new
sociology of education and the sociology of pedagogy, the Fair Go Project brings into
play a number of key intersecting theoretical and practical frames concerning student
engagement. Since the research has a specific focus on low SES students, it takes up
a particular conceptualization of the relationships that these students historically have
had with schools and education.
There are three main sections to this article. The first discusses theory that suggests
there are strong connections between student engagement and student self-
assessment. The second extends this discussion by outlining the theoretical underpin-
nings and empirical work of the Fair Go Project. The third introduces and describes
the REAL dimensions of student self-assessment. This is a pedagogical framework

*Corresponding author. School of Education, University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797,
Penrith South DC, NSW 1797, Australia. Email: [email protected]

ISSN 0969-594X (print)/ISSN 1465-329X (online)/06/020193–21

© 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09695940600703969
194 G. Munns and H. Woodward

intended to enhance, at the same time, student self-assessment and student engage-
ment. This final section discusses how the REAL framework has been developed in
the Fair Go Project and describes how it is being tested empirically in the project.

Student engagement
Most definitions of student engagement have focused on either the cognitive,
emotional or behavioural relationships that students have with education and schools.
However, in a recent meta-analysis of research into student engagement undertaken
by Fredricks et al. (2004), the writers argued against the separation of student engage-
ment into discrete cognitive, emotional or behavioural aspects. Rather, Fredricks
et al. contended that ‘engagement’ should be thought of as a ‘multidimensional
construct’ and that the term engagement should be reserved specifically for learning
situations where the cognitive, emotional and behavioural components are all
strongly present at the same time (Fredricks et al., 2004). Viewed in this way, student
engagement is when students are simultaneously:
● Reflectively involved in deep understanding and expertise (high cognition).
● Genuinely valuing what they are doing (high emotion).
● Actively participating in school and classroom activities (high behaviour).
This definition captures student engagement as a substantive sense of satisfaction with,
and a psychological investment in, the classroom work being undertaken. Here is a
clear distinction between procedural forms of student engagement, in which students
are merely being on task and complying with teachers’ wishes and instructions.

Student engagement and student self-assessment

Substantive student engagement should undoubtedly most interest educators
concerned with improved educational outcomes for their learners. The suggestion of
this article is that there are critical connections between this level of student engage-
ment and student self-assessment. This is arguably not the case in classrooms where
the emphasis is purely on procedural engagement. In such classrooms there seems to
be little need to have students involved in self-assessment processes. After all, the
main aim is the setting of tasks by the teacher and the following of them by the
students. On the other hand, it is argued here that for students to be substantively
engaged, then it is necessary that there be a classroom philosophy of individual and
collective student self-assessment. There are three reasons for this.
First, this classroom philosophy will allow opportunities for the students to share
with each other and their teacher their thoughts and feelings about their learning.
Our claim here is that such a philosophy is a critical classroom element that will
move students closer to engagement. It achieves this by directly involving students
in processes that emphasize and encourage the sharing of the classroom pedagogic
spaces. Within this sharing, students have opportunities to reflect on what and
how they are learning, what they are achieving, their view of themselves as
 Student engagement and student self-assessment 195

learners, and the say they have over the direction and evaluation of their learning.
Such reflective processes open up the potential for improved learning and
increased self-regulation.
Second, and importantly, self-assessment can provide critical feedback to teachers
about whether students are engaged. Perhaps this is the only way that teachers will
know. Since engagement is an internal feeling, it is difficult (and arguably impossible)
to discern by looking for external signs alone. There is an internal–external tension
concerning the encouragement and recognition of student engagement. McFadden
and Munns (2002), in discussing student engagement, student self-assessment and
the social relations of pedagogy, recognized this:
It is the students themselves who will be able to tell us that they are engaged and who
will say whether education is working for them in a culturally sensitive and relevant
way. … It is at the messy point of teachers and students responding to each other
culturally in relation to classroom discourse and assessment practices where we are
truly going to see whether or not students feel that school is for them. (McFadden &
Munns, 2002, p. 364)
Third, the connection between student engagement and student self-assessment
can be extended in another salient way to do with our understanding of the position
and processes of student self-assessment in classrooms. We want to put forward that
there is an intriguing parallel in the internal–external tension in the ideas and processes
of student self-assessment and student engagement. Both at a theoretical and practical
level student self-assessment is often seen as a set of tasks to be completed by students
in order that they make an appraisal of their learning (Hart, 1999; Bryant & Timmins,
2002). Of course student self-assessment has a task component that can be set and
monitored externally. But it can be much more. If we are interested in substantive and
long-term student engagement then the proposal in this article is that there is a need
seriously to consider the processes within student self-assessment tasks. In short, we
need to focus on the internal processes: the ways of encouraging students to think
about learning within a particular classroom philosophy.
Within this orientation our view is that we can get to the heart of the links between
student engagement, classroom pedagogies, student learning experiences and high-
performance learning. One way of viewing these links is in the alignment of assess-
ment, curriculum and pedagogy (Bernstein, 1996). When it is recognized that this
alignment has to work from both sides of the teacher–learner equation then self-
assessment becomes a key. The recognition of the value of self-assessment and the
necessary interrelatedness of quality pedagogy and high-performance learning are
well documented (Cumming & Maxwell, 1999; Black et al., 2002). Furthermore, the
literature consistently points to the importance of peer group interaction (Mercer,
2000; Mercer et al., 2004) in the development of students’ understandings. There are
also convincing arguments to suggest that in classrooms where students are scaf-
folded to strive towards mastery (as opposed to performance) learning orientations,
and supported towards appropriate self-evaluations, then they are constructively
involved in the development of competence even from the earliest school ages
(Butler, 2004).
196 G. Munns and H. Woodward

Student engagement and the Fair Go Project

The Fair Go Project has taken up these ideas about student engagement and student
self-assessment. A critical part of the project’s research has focused on the role that
student self-assessment might play within classroom pedagogies aimed towards
student engagement among students attending primary schools in low SES commu-
nities. This study is a joint undertaking between a team of researchers from the
University of Western Sydney (School of Education) and the Priority Schools Fund-
ing Program1 (NSW Department of Education and Training). An action research
project employing a co-researching ethnographic methodology, the study brings
together university researchers, educational consultants, schoolteachers and commu-
nity members. The project’s theoretical underpinnings derive from important
research into ‘authentic’ (Newmann & Associates, 1996) and ‘productive’ pedagogy
(Hayes et al., 2005).2
The research context of the Fair Go Project provided important opportunities for
an empirical consideration of how students from backgrounds historically character-
ized by school disaffection and resistance might be encouraged to have substantive
engagement with their schools and classrooms. More than ten schools have been
involved in this research. These are all located within Sydney’s south-west region.
Nearly two million people live in this region, many of whom are from diverse cultural
backgrounds, including the largest concentration of Aboriginal people in the country.
The communities the project’s schools serve are characterized by substantial numbers
of people from low socio-economic backgrounds. Families live either in cheap private
housing or in the countless public housing estates throughout the area. Single
parents, many of whom are female, head most of these families. The region has high
levels of unemployment with youth unemployment a particular problem.
Infrastructure such as public transport and community services has been historically
lacking in comparison with more affluent areas. The schools are familiar with the
emotional, social and financial stresses associated with socio-economic disadvantage
and are also faced with the challenges of high student mobility, negative media atten-
tion and with systemic and classroom pressure to improve student outcomes to levels
comparable to their more advantaged peers. All schools have significant numbers of
beginning teachers (university qualified, but in their first five years of teaching). The
teachers involved in the project have high levels of energy, commitment and enthusi-
asm for student success.3
As mentioned above, the research context threw up a number of interplaying prac-
tical and theoretical challenges. The project recognized that there were important
insights offered by individually focused cognitive–behavioural approaches from within
educational psychology that would point to interventions to enhance students’ moti-
vation and engagement (see Martin, in press). However, the project was also mindful
of Furlong’s (1991) caveat. In his appeal for the reconstruction of theoretical perspec-
tives around disaffected low SES school pupils, Furlong argued that psychologists
hardly ever get to the dimensions of social power affecting students’ responses to their
schools and classrooms. Consequently, the Fair Go Project team utilized concepts
 Student engagement and student self-assessment 197

within the sociology of pedagogy as an attempt to complement psychological theories

around student motivation. In particular, the seminal work of Bernstein (1996) was
taken up in developing a framework around how schools operate to structure the
consciousness and emotionality of students. Critical here is the way schools, through
their curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices ‘convey powerful messages’ that
‘shape individual perceptions of what they might do, and what they might become’
(McFadden & Munns, 2002, pp. 362–363). What follows is the unique way that the
Fair Go Project attempted to conceptualize student engagement within a sociological
framing. There are three foundational components of this framing.
The first involved the significant task of defining substantive engagement, and this
has been an important aspect of the theoretical work of the Fair Go Project. Initially
this involved problematizing student compliance. It was a risky step given that class-
room management issues inevitably dominated the thoughts and practices of the teach-
ers the project was working with. However, student compliance was seen to be a
pedagogical outcome that held no guarantees for enhanced academic and social
outcomes. Furthermore, there was compelling research evidence showing that low SES
students shaped classroom practices by resisting high-level tasks and complying with
low-level tasks (see Jones, 1989; Haberman, 1991; Munns, 1996, 2005). The Fair Go
Project calls substantive classroom engagement small ‘e’ engagement (‘e’ngagement).
This is in line with the Fredricks et al. definitions discussed above, but with a contextual
reshaping. Small ‘e’ engagement is defined as a multidimensional construct: the simul-
taneous coming together of the cognitive, the affective and the operative at high levels.
The cognitive and emotional aspects of engagement were accepted by the Fair Go
Project, though ‘affective’ was considered to offer a clearer pedagogical focus for teach-
ers. This is elaborated below when engaging practices are discussed. Changing behav-
ioural (Fredricks et al., 2004) to ‘operative’ recognized not only the rejection of student
compliance discussed above, but also a central research argument that for low SES
students to be beneficially engaged, they need to be highly operational learners. Oper-
ative again provided a stronger pedagogical and outcome focus for both teachers and
students. The definition means that when students are strongly engaged they are
successfully involved in tasks of high intellectual quality and they have passionate posi-
tive feelings about these tasks. Viewed in this way, engagement is much more than
students simply being on task and complying with teachers’ wishes and directions.
The second frame of interest to the Fair Go Project is another level of student
engagement: big ‘E’ engagement (‘E’ngagement). This is that longer and more endur-
ing relationship with schooling and education that is rejected in large numbers by
students living in poor communities (Abowitz, 2000). ‘E’ngagement is a commitment
to education: the belief that ‘school is for me’ (McFadden & Munns, 2002). The Fair
Go Project believes that these two levels of engagement are interactively linked. Its
position is that small ‘e’ngagement is embedded within big ‘E’ngagement and this
provides an important opportunity for classrooms to become critical sites where the
immediate educational experiences build to a future-oriented consciousness that sees
education as a resource to be profitably employed within students’ lives. Viewed in
this way, the argument is that there is a temporal relationship between these levels of
198 G. Munns and H. Woodward

engagement. It is useful to conceptualize this embedding of the two levels of engage-

ment as ‘the future in the present’. There is an intriguing theoretical twist here to the
seminal work on resistance theory by Willis (1977). Willis argued that when working-
class students freely choose to reject what schooling purports to offer them (academic
success in return for acceptance of and compliance with curriculum and pedagogy),
they open themselves up to the very real possibility of future exploitation and oppres-
sion. They make ‘a free choice to be unfree’ (Munns & McFadden, 2000, p. 61): their
present freely chosen resistant stances and actions determine their future unequal
structural position. As Willis (1977, p. 120) put it, ‘It is the future in the present which
hammers freedom into inequality’. A tantalizing research prospect emerges here. How
can the very kinds of low SES students that Willis described be encouraged, by the
nature of their classroom experiences and relationships, not to see school and educa-
tion as a debilitating set of encounters to be ultimately resisted, but rather as a cumu-
lative series of engaging phenomena? How can the future in the present not restrict,
but bring into being enhanced future educational possibilities and, as a consequence,
challenge the probability of inherited structural locations?
At a classroom level there is a third theoretical frame that speaks to these links and
this has become central to the research of the project. Engagement (at both levels) is
a consciousness and an educational identity significantly influenced, as noted above,
by classroom message systems (curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices:
Bernstein, 1996). Since both ‘e’ngagement and ‘E’ngagement are internal feelings,
there is an argument that it is the students’ internal processes that are crucial. This is
the case even though the catalysts for engagement may be substantially through exter-
nal classroom practices and discourses (learning experiences and discussion and
reflection on those learning experiences).

Classroom messages and discourses of power

The three theoretical frames around student engagement described in the preceding
three paragraphs provide a distinct research focus. Early work in the Fair Go Project
aimed to explore what constituted quality teaching for students in low SES contexts.
At the same time as these ideas were directing classroom research, emerging data
across the whole Fair Go Project began first to suggest, and then later to confirm, that
there were differences in classrooms across the multiple research sites. Students were
showing signs that they were becoming more ‘e’ngaged. These signs included being
more focused on learning experiences and increasingly sharing these experiences
outside the classroom with friends and parents.
The Fair Go Project then hypothesized, drawing on Bernstein (1996), that these
signs of ‘e’ngagement were influenced by the messages delivered through the changed
classroom pedagogies. The hypothesis was developed through an analysis of what
were the key pedagogical differences in the research classrooms and how this
contrasted with the general school experience for low SES students. Both the
theoretical and empirical investigations opened up opportunities for the project to
explore the links between classrooms and the wider dimensions of social power.
 Student engagement and student self-assessment 199

Table 1. Discourses of power and disengaging messages for low SES students

Knowledge ‘Why are we doing this?’: restricted access to powerful knowledge

Ability ‘I can’t do this’: feelings of not being able to achieve and a spiral of low expectations
and aspirations
Control ‘I’m not doing that’: struggles over classroom time and space and debilitating
consequences of resistance and compliance
Place ‘I’m just a kid from’: devalued as individual and learner
Voice ‘Teacher tells us’: no say over learning with teacher as sole controller and judge

These connections between classroom practices and discourses with wider societal
structures were conceptualized to turn on the temporal concept of the future in the
present: the small ‘e’ engagement embedded in the big ‘E’ engagement. The central
notion is that while students are processing and taking up positions within the power-
ful school and classroom message systems (curriculum, pedagogy and assessment)
they are also negotiating with their teachers ‘discourses of power’: knowledge, ability,
control, place and voice. This discourse finds expression around five key issues,
namely, knowledge, ability, control, place and voice.
● What counts as knowledge and who has access to really useful knowledge?
● Who has ability?
● Who controls the teaching space?
● Who is valued as an individual and a learner?
● Whose voice is given credence within that space?
These all influence the way teachers teach and how students see themselves as learn-
ers. Again, to generalize across the group, the research literature shows that the
common and recurring result of these negotiations for low SES students is that they
are receiving disengaging messages (see Connell et al., 1991). These messages are
summarized in Table 1.

Interrupting the discourses of power

If many students from low SES backgrounds are continuously receiving disengaging
messages, then the Fair Go Project research was indicating that there could be, and
needed to be, interruptions to the discourses of power. The central research question
of the Fair Go Project research then sharpened its focus to: How might decisive peda-
gogical changes turn disengaging messages into engaging messages for low SES
students? This involved a consideration of how this might be possible within practices
and interactions (discourses) on both sides of the teacher–student classroom relation-
ship. Such a position explores an analytical space not allowed by the determinism of
other reproduction theorists (see Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). As McFadden and
Munns (2002, p. 363) have argued: ‘It is hoped … that the organizational context of
education can be used to disrupt the discourses of power such that individuals can
begin to change their own consciousness (Bernstein, 1995)’.
200 G. Munns and H. Woodward

The research was suggesting that there were two significant aspects of the pedagog-
ical changes through which these messages are carried and which can powerfully
interrupt the discourses of power. These are:
● Classroom learning experiences designed to be highly cognitive, highly affective
and highly operative (that is, planned to target definitions of student engagement).
● Classroom processes designed to encourage enhanced reflective processes across
the learning community (the ‘insider classroom’).
The ‘insider classroom’ concept came about through the ways the project was defin-
ing the kinds of classroom learning communities that would foster student engagement.
Drawing on the critical literacy literature, the following definitions were used to help
think about the kinds of highly engaged learners the project wanted in classrooms:
… finding ways of enabling and encouraging learners to enter into communities of prac-
tice, discourse and inquiry … to become an ‘insider’ in the culture of the classroom.
(Durrant & Green, 2000, p. 103)
… involves becoming identified and identifying oneself as a member of a socially meaning-
ful group … playing a socially meaningful ‘role’ within that discourse community. (Gee,
1990, p. 143)

Classroom observations and theoretical investigations (Black et al., 2002, on self-

assessment; Cazden, 2001, on classroom discourse; Dweck, 1999 and Hattie, 2002,
on teacher feedback) saw the development of an interactive framework that constituted
the key elements of an insider classroom. These were: student community of reflection,
teacher inclusive conversations, teacher feedback and student self-assessment.4

The central role of student self-assessment

Thus far, the present article has defined student engagement, attempted to establish
links between student engagement and student self-assessment and introduced a socio-
logical framing of student engagement developed in the Fair Go Project. The bringing
together of literature from both the psychology and sociology of education addresses
Furlong’s dilemma (above) by utilizing the combined strengths of each approach. The
strength of the psychological focus is in the understanding of the complex factors that
impact on individual student responses and energies. A sociological strength is found
within an examination of the connections between classroom processes and discourses
and the wider dimensions of social power. Bernstein’s (1995, 1996) project offers a
way to bring these approaches together, linking individual consciousness, pedagogical
devices and wider societal structures. As Singh and Luke (1996, p. xii) have stated:
Bernstein’s analysis of pedagogy connects ‘issues of the face-to-face social construction
of knowledge with issues of institutional location and structure’.
To return to classroom issues around substantive ‘e’ngagement, the Fair Go
Project research hypothesized that if the aim is for students to be substantively
‘e’ngaged in high level learning experiences, then student self-assessment had to play
a central role in the classroom. There were two aspects to this central role.
 Student engagement and student self-assessment 201

First, reflection had to be extended to deep-thinking conceptual planes where the

cognitive, the affective and the operative become one. The aim here is to focus
students’ reflections about their learning towards the high levels of thinking, feeling
and working that define ‘e’ngagement. Second, student self-assessment had to
provide opportunities for students to be involved in their own interruptions to the
‘discourses of power’. That is, students needed to:

● Reflect on what they were learning and how it connected to their lives (knowledge).
● Be actively involved in evaluating their own performance and working on how to
improve that performance (ability).
● See that the classroom pedagogic space was to be shared between themselves, their
classmates and their teacher within a community of learners (control).
● Feel that they were valued as individuals and learners (place).
● Have a say in the way learning experiences were designed and evaluated (voice).

The empirical work then became focused on this central role of student self-
assessment within classrooms aiming for student engagement. The challenge was to
explore how student self-assessment could evolve further towards a vital pedagogical
activity, instrumental in enhancing student engagement, improving learning and
teaching and changing the whole context of the classroom. The result of this
research is the REAL dimensions of student self-assessment (Reflective Engage-
ment: Authentic Learning). The development, form, implementation and ongoing
testing of this pedagogical framework are now described.

REAL dimensions of student self-assessment

The first framework
The REAL framework takes a qualitative and formative approach to student self-
assessment. Inspired by Biggs’ solo taxonomy (1995), it is intended to be used as a
pedagogical framework through which teachers can enhance teaching and learning by
encouraging students to move through deeper levels of reflection.
There has been an evolutionary process to its development. The first step was in
the investigation of the interrelationship between student engagement and student
self-assessment. This took place in a number of classrooms in one of the research
schools. Using an action co-researching methodology, teachers and university
researchers planned and evaluated changes to classroom pedagogies in line with the
Fair Go Project’s frameworks. Students were introduced to self-assessment processes
(for example, large and small group discussions and the compiling of learning jour-
nals). Data was collected through observations, interactions with the students and
analysis of their written reflections.
The action phase of the research began in a Year 4 classroom (learners generally in
the 9–10 age group). The teacher began by encouraging the children to be part of the
learning process by giving them opportunities to make decisions about the context of
their learning and propose processes whereby designated outcomes could be
202 G. Munns and H. Woodward

achieved. The research focused on the involvement of children in authentic decision-

making within the classroom and accessing their thinking about their place in the
learning framework. One of the first issues that arose was the necessity for the chil-
dren to have the vocabulary to enable them to talk about both the curriculum and
about their learning. They needed reflection opportunities for the children that
allowed them to talk about their learning. Children were given post-it notes to write
under one or all of the following headings:
● What I learnt.
● What I liked.
● What I didn’t like.
● What I want to know.
The post-its were then placed on a chart under these headings. Other children were
then able to muse about the responses and eventually the responses were entered into
an assessment journal. As the children became more relaxed and more familiar with
the process, the entries became more expressive and assisted both the teacher and the
children to understand better the learning that was accomplished and how they could
build on this learning for the future. During this period of time it was noticed that the
language the teacher used assisted the children to refocus their work from trying to
please the teacher to doing the best they could to master the task criteria. The teacher
encouraged students to make judgments about their work and continually opened up
discussions about learning by working outside the teacher default discourse of initia-
tion-response-evaluation (IRE: Cazden, 2001). The issue of teacher discourse
increasingly became a focal point for our classroom investigations.
After a period of ten weeks research observations were showing that the children
seemed to be merely ‘going through’ the process of reflection. They did as they were
asked and they complied with the teachers’ requirements. Ironically, their compliance
in their self-assessments became the sort of stances that we had attempted to
overcome as we started the project: students going through their classroom paces
without involvement in their learning processes. At the same time the research team
was also becoming dissatisfied with the one-dimensional nature of the reflective
probes. There was a recognition that we needed to design ways of encouraging the
students to think more deeply about their processes of learning and the relationship
between reflection and engaged learners. It was at this stage that we started to focus
on the possibility of a framework that would help us see beyond the basic level of self-
assessment. Biggs’ (1995) solo taxonomy opened the discussion and later became the
foundation of our thinking. Biggs put forward the idea that assessment items should
be designed in such a way that the assessment product revealed different levels of
understanding. The solo taxonomy is a systematic way of increasing the structural
complexity of learning and assessment tasks through unistructural, multistructural,
relational and abstract sequences. Drawing on the solo taxonomy, a multidimensional
self-assessment framework (Figure 1) was developed. This first step worked within
the concepts of solo, but represented a revisioning to capture the intersections of
student engagement and student self-assessment. It had two aims and associated
 Student engagement and student self-assessment 203

Dimension Affective Cognitive Operative

Conceptual:
translating into
concepts
Relational:
relational to other
areas/processes
Multidimensional:
content plus
process
Unidimensional:
content basic

Figure 1. Dimensions of student self-assessment (the basic framework)

features. The first was to capture the multidimensionality of ‘e’ngagement: the

research team wanted students to reflect on their learning within cognitive, affective
and operative domains. The second was that we wanted to move those reflections to
higher conceptual levels as a way of encouraging stronger ‘e’ngaged learners. Basic to
this framework was the belief that engagement occurs when there is the powerful
coming together of high levels of the cognitive, the affective and the operational. The
framework is read from the bottom to capture and simulate the reflections moving to
higher conceptual levels.
At this time, these ideas around student self-assessment under development in the
Figure 1. Dimensions of student self-assessment (the basic framework)

Fair Go Project research began to be more widely taken up. A group of schools focused
on student engagement using the Fair Go Project pedagogical changes (discussed
above). Data about impact on students was gathered through teacher and student
interviews. It became apparent in these interviews with teachers that to put this frame-
work into practice, they felt they needed to be given examples of questions that could
be placed within each dimension. Subsequently, members of the research team devel-
oped different categories of questions and reflective prompts. The different probes cut
across and overlaid the dimensions and there was a dual intention to this process. The
first was to cover many of the types of reflective prompts that could be used in student
self-assessment processes. The second and most important intention was to provide
opportunities for students to confront, through their own reflections, the discourses
of power at the heart of classroom messages. The categories of probes were:
● Thinking about achievement.
● Looking for evidence.
● Working with other people.
● Overcoming barriers.
● Reframing the task.
There was seen to be an interactive dynamic to these probes. The thought was
that together they would encourage students to be involved in their own implemen-
tation of ‘e’ngaging classroom discourses. For example, ‘e’ngaging messages about
204 G. Munns and H. Woodward

knowledge can be linked with probes around achievement. Looking for evidence
probes connect with discourses around voice. Probes around reframing the task and
working with other people can be coupled with the development of a community of
learners that encourage shared control of pedagogic spaces and a valuing of individ-
ual learners. Probes focusing on overcoming barriers give students opportunities to
work on their abilities while at the same time providing them with a voice about the
design and evaluation of classroom learning experiences.

Factors impacting on the latest version of the framework

This initial version of the framework was implemented in a number of research
schools and this implementation led to further development of the REAL framework.
Teachers in the research schools chose to investigate the model in terms of their
perceptions of children’s learning. Subsequent meetings and workshops brought
forward data that assisted in the exploration of self-assessment, its function within the
classroom community and relationship with student engagement. A number of
further implementation factors and experiences then moved the REAL framework to
its current stage. These are now discussed in turn.
The first was the need to show teachers the kinds of ‘lateral’ probes that would
encourage high levels of reflection. Lateral means the kinds of probes that move
students into new ways of thinking about their learning. Initially, there was a view that
if teachers understood the concept of the framework they would be able to develop
their own probes. When it was seen that this process needed to be scaffolded for the
teachers, a series of uncategorized probes was developed by the research team from
the literature on student reflection (see Hart, 1999) and research experience in
schools. These probes were chosen as interesting and different ways to prompt
student reflection. Initially, these questions were left as a list for teachers to select
from when they were working with the children’s self-assessment. However, while
they were seen as valuable, they were not placed into appropriate sections of the
framework. Rather, they were used independently and therefore did not contribute to
the areas and levels of reflection the research was working towards.
The second factor that emerged was concerning the dimensions themselves. While
it was continually emphasized that they were not hierarchical, some teachers saw that
the students had to progress from unidimensional to conceptual, and therefore
students could not progress from one to the other unless they had mastered the previ-
ous stage. This meant they felt that having established the foundational unidimen-
sional platform (‘what did you learn’, ‘what did you like’ and ‘what did you do’) they
moved to the multidimensional (‘how did you learn’). The teachers discovered that
this was an extremely difficult concept for the students to articulate. After some
discussion it was resolved that they should try a different entry into this dimension,
namely, ‘what did you do’, ‘how did you do it’, then ‘how did you learn those things’.
That is, there was a subtle but significant shift to a focus on learning processes.
Though difficult, this dimension was seen to be very important within the engage-
ment-student self-assessment interplay. After all, the Fair Go Project acknowledges
 Student engagement and student self-assessment 205

that learning the right answers will get students through certain aspects and stages of
school but learning how to learn was more critical for ‘E’ngagement and lifelong
learning. It was also found that some students could more easily understand the rela-
tional stage before they understood the multidimensional stage. This reiterated the
understanding that the model does not always have to operate in a rigidly hierarchical
manner.
The third research issue concerned the understanding of higher order concepts.
While the notions of ‘what you learnt’ and ‘what you did’ were considered important
concepts to be established, it was discovered that some students (particularly 5- and
6-year-olds) did not find it easy to communicate them. Most of them could point to
a ‘smiley’ face to indicate what they liked but further question revealed (not surpris-
ingly) that this response was more to do with pleasing the teacher or how they felt at
the time. As a result some teachers working in the project developed and introduced
activities and games that helped students develop a language about their feelings
associated with different classroom learning experiences.
The fourth research factor was the difficulty that teachers had in developing probes
for the affective dimension. Again, while the initial stages (like? dislike? why? why
not?) were relatively easy to establish, trying to extend to ideas of higher order
emotions proved more difficult. Believing in the importance of reflections in this area,
teachers set about ensuring they included situations where different emotions were
explored and articulated. The students found talking about what they learnt at this
level challenging. Many of them had never thought about it, and so again, many
different kinds of activities were devised that gave the students opportunity to talk
with others about their achievements.5
As these challenges were being faced, there was an increasing belief about the
potential this framework had for further development of children’s learning. At the
same time the research team moved to a concentrated focus on learning in a public
housing estate school.6 The school was a particularly important research site as these
kinds of estates are characterized by very high levels of student disengagement. The
interplay of teachers’ pedagogies with the social and physical environment is seen to
be a contributing factor in this disengagement (see Connell et al., 1991). If the frame-
work contributed to higher levels of student engagement in such a challenging
context, then its potential would be substantiated. The research process was to work
with the teacher and the students, implementing and evaluating engaging pedagogies
and student self-assessment processes. On weekly visits the research team co-planned
with the teacher, observed the children during class, and continually talked to them
to assist them in their thinking about their own learning. The classroom teacher had
been involved with the ideas and practices of the Fair Go Project for a number of
years and was committed to the ways that student reflection could build a classroom
learning community. She is an outstanding example of a teacher in this context,
building relationships with many of the most ‘at-risk’ students in the school. Student
self-assessment was a critical aspect of the way these relationships were built. Initial
observations and conversations with these children revealed that they were prepared
to speak freely about their learning. They emphasized thinking and producing good
206 G. Munns and H. Woodward

work. As one girl put it, ‘I love it when you’re writing and really get into it’. They also
saw teamwork as a great advantage, not only able to help them think and make deci-
sions but also helping them learn to respect every one’s ideas and share responsibility.
This was a remarkable achievement. The teacher revealed that earlier in the year she
had to continually stop children from vocally and physically abusing each other.
Importantly for the project, she had used reflections in the ‘working with other
people’ category to address this issue.
Another method used to encourage the children in their thinking about their learn-
ing was to issue each child with a notebook. In it they were to write notes about their
learning wherever and whenever it occurred. Initially the writing was restricted to
school, until the children became proficient in recording and understanding what
they needed to do. At the outset students were asked to think about what they knew
now and what else they needed to know. Responses generally demonstrated their
reflections at unidimensional and multidimensional levels:
I chose this because I enjoyed it and we got to play with a machine and add stuff to it.
I learnt how to use a machine. I learnt about the five different things a robot can do. … I
learned this by listening to Richard’s instructions and to do things he was talking about. I
felt like I was getting smarter just by learning a new thing. (Year 5 student from reflective
notebook)

As the research proceeded it became apparent that a framework for student self-
assessment and reflection would become more powerful if the teacher and children
were constantly involved in responding orally and in writing to a series of challenging,
interesting and lateral probes. The previously discussed lists of these kinds of probes
were then arranged across the framework using a coding process. The nature of this
model and the inclusion of the essential elements of reflection, engagement and
authentic learning led to it being named the REAL dimensions of student self-
assessment (Figure 2).7
Figure 2. REAL dimensions of student self-assessment

The REAL framework and student engagement

The previous sections of this article have described the development of the REAL
framework. This framework is still evolving, currently being trialled in a number of
classrooms in the Fair Go Project. It is the contention of this paper that the REAL
framework, in concert with other classroom changes called for within the Fair Go
Project, has the potential to be a significant factor in encouraging productive student
engagement with school as a place and education as a resource: the kinds of engage-
ment conceptualized as ‘e’ngagement and ‘E’ngagement. The current phase of the
Fair Go Project is using data from student learning journals, student interviews and
a student engagement questionnaire (Likert scale responses) to measure increased
levels of student engagement. This research will also gather evidence to validate the
framework in relation to learners’ use of levels, categories and probes and how these
correlate with student engagement in relation to messages carried within the
discourses of power.
 Student engagement and student self-assessment 207




 
   
  

 
  
    
     
 
 

 
 

 
     

 
 
  

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208 G. Munns and H. Woodward

Relational: relating feelings, thought and actions to other areas/processes

Affective Cognitive Operative

How do you feel when Connect this Think of a way to use

you achieve your goals? knowledge to something ... since we practiced it in
you already know or can class.
What other feelings do.
do you have about this Reflect on the
work? How do these strategy we used and why
processes/content relate to we used it.
How can you ensure something else you know?
your group has positive How could you
feelings about your work Who do you know become more involved in
together? who would find this teamwork next time that
learning (content) or would be different than this
What problems do you strategy (process) helpful? time?
have to solve about how
you feel when it gets tough? Find three sources List five places you
where this new knowledge could use the skills you
How can you feel like could be useful. have learnt during this
this more in your work at lesson/unit/task?
school? When and where else
could you use this What would you do
information? differently in your next
project given the
knowledge you now have?
Conceptual: translating into concepts feelings, thought and actions about learning
processes
Affective Cognitive Operative

Think about the many Explain how your Why is what you have
feelings you have about thinking was different learnt critical for you as a
your work. Use colours and/ today from yesterday and person.
or drawing to represent from what it could be
three of these feelings. tomorrow. List three ways the
skills you have learnt can
How can you generate Why is it important be used elsewhere?
some specific feelings about for you to
you work, e.g., empathy, know/understand/be able to How you would help
curiosity. do this? someone else to learn
something you discovered
Survey the members Reflect on a today?
of your group about how conversation you had with
they felt during this task and someone else that triggered What did you find out
align them with you own your thinking about ... about you problem solving
 Student engagement and student self-assessment 209

skills and strategies while

How could you doing this activity?
What did you find to broaden your thinking
be the most difficult part in through and learn more What advice would
discussing your feelings about what you did you give me before we
about this task? What did today/during a continue this lesson?
you do to overcome this? task/lesson/unit?

What other positive Represent how you

feelings would you like to think (drawing, matrix,
generate in future sessions? mind map etc).

Key

Looking for Working with Overcoming

Thinking about Reframing the
evidence other people barriers
achievement task

Figure 2. REAL dimensions of student self-assessment

One of the key issues to emerge from this project is the importance of classroom
discourse. At the heart of this discourse is the language of the teacher and the
students. The Fair Go Project talks about ‘teacher inclusive conversations’ and
‘student community of reflection’, a form of classroom discourse that opens up the
expectations of the students so that they can openly communicate with others
about their thinking, their feelings and their development as learners. The hope is
that the REAL framework might be able to provide an important step for teachers
in building an engaging ‘insider’ culture in the classroom learning community.
Such an ‘insider’ culture would bring students face to face in a positive way with
classroom discourses and that here, in the words of Bernstein (1995), is an organi-
zational context of education that can be used, inter alia, ‘to disrupt the discourses
of power such that individuals can begin to change their own consciousness’
(McFadden & Munns, 2002, p. 363). If this happens the view is that there will be
very real chances that engaging classroom messages will be realized for the students
(Table 2; see p. 184).
Subsequently there is an authentic hope that they will develop a consciousness that
‘school is for me’, rather than one of defeat, struggle and giving up. The words of the
students are giving some life to that hope. Their journals talk about receiving engag-
ing messages:

I chose this work because I am proud of it … I now know that I can accomplish more things
than I thought … I think I am more confident than I was before … I can write more than
I ever thought … (Year 6 student from reflective notebook)

In interviews their words are about ‘e’ngagement and ‘E’ngagement.

210 G. Munns and H. Woodward

Table 2. Discourses of power and engaging messages for low SES students

Knowledge ‘We can see the connection and the meaning’: reflectively constructed access to
contextualized and powerful knowledge
Ability ‘I am capable’: feelings of being able to achieve and a spiral of high expectations and
aspirations
Control ‘We do this together’: sharing of classroom time and space: interdependence,
mutuality and power with
Place ‘It’s great to be a kid from’: valued as individual and learner and feelings of belonging
and ownership over learning
Voice ‘We share’: environment of discussion and reflection about learning with students
and teachers playing reciprocal meaningful roles

Student: We get to do self-assessment and we get to say how we feel about the work.
And she [teacher] reads it and tries to make improvements in what she
teaches us, and she tries to make it as fun as possible. She listens to the whole
class and she just wants everyone to enjoy what she’s teaching and be able
to learn it.
Interviewer: Tell me about opportunities for reflection in your class.
Student: Well self-assessment. We write down what we’ve been learning and if we
liked it and why we liked it. And if we needed some more help to do it. How
to overcome barriers.
Interviewer: And has that been useful for you?
Student: Yeah it makes you think more about what you’re doing, it makes you think
more about what you’re learning. And how you understand it.
Interviewer: Does it make you feel different about school?
Student: Yeah because without school and without learning you can’t get forward. If
you don’t learn you won’t go nowhere. But if you think and talk about learn-
ing more it will make you keep going. And the more you can keep going the
more you achieve. I’ve learnt this year … to keep going and just take the risk.
Never give up.

Notes
1. The Priority Schools Funding Program (PSFP) is a program aimed at improving educational
outcomes for students living in the poorest communities in NSW.
2. The ‘productive pedagogies’ framework of the Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study
(QSRLS) (Hayes et al., 2005) built on the seminal authentic instruction research of Newmann
& Associates (1996). While neither the Newmann nor the QSRLS analyses of classroom prac-
tices specifically targeted educationally disadvantaged students, both studies proposed that the
pedagogical approaches described in their research would bring forward enhanced outcomes
for all learners, including the educationally disadvantaged. There are four dimensions to the
productive pedagogies model: intellectual quality, relevance, supportive classroom environment
and recognition of difference. Within each dimension there are a number of elements. The
dimension of intellectual quality involves students undertaking classroom experiences that
encourage higher order thinking, deep knowledge and deep understandings. This is supported
 Student engagement and student self-assessment 211

by students engaging in substantive conversations and problematizing knowledge. Processes of

intellectual quality are sustained by the teaching and taking up of metalanguage within class-
rooms. Relevance has the elements of knowledge integration within a problem-based curricu-
lum that makes clear connections with both students’ background knowledges and real-life
contexts. A supportive classroom environment is characterized by a socially positive environ-
ment where the criteria are explicit and students have some control over the pace, direction and
outcomes of the learning experiences. Such an environment has students both engaged in their
learning and self-regulating their own classroom behaviours. Critical elements of recognition
of difference are the identification, acknowledgement and deployment of cultural knowledges
together with the use of deliberate strategies to involve students from different backgrounds.
There is also a promotion and acceptance of concepts and values surrounding group identity
and citizenship. A narrative style of teaching is seen to be important within this dimension. The
argument is that when these four dimensions of ‘productive pedagogies’, in concert, are found
in high levels in classrooms, then there is a pedagogy that will produce great educational benefit
to learners.
3. See Munns (2004) and Fair Go Team (in press) for a more detailed overview of the project.
4. See Munns et al. (in press), for a more detailed discussion of the insider classroom framework.
5. See Munns et al. (2005) for a more detailed description of the activities and games designed to
assist learners respond to probes across all levels and dimensions of the emerging framework.
6. Public housing estates are very poor areas. These are impoverished places for those in society
who bear the greatest social, physical and financial difficulties. Invariably there are single-
parent families, with increasing numbers of these headed by females.
7. Note that the 60 probes are intended to be examples of the framework in action. In use, probes
can be introduced at any level and across all categories depending on the needs of the learning
context.

Notes on contributors
Geoff Munns has more than 25 years teaching experience in primary schools (includ-
ing executive roles as Assistant Principal and Principal). His research interests
focus on improved educational outcomes for students from educationally disad-
vantaged backgrounds (including indigenous students). In particular he is inter-
ested in how these students can become engaged in their classrooms and
subsequently develop a long-term commitment to education.
Helen Woodward is Associate Professor at the University of Western Sydney in the
School of Education (retired). She has been Head of Primary Education and as
such has been deeply involved in the development and implementation of several
primary education programs. Assessment has been of both research and practical
interest for some years. Helen has written one book on assessment, written arti-
cles and presented at conferences for national and international audiences and
has worked with educators across the world in establishing assessment programs
and strategies for students from primary school through higher education.

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