Understanding success

What's this all about?

For the last two decades “evidence-based decision-making” has been a mantra for policymakers, politicians and influential media. What is measured matters. Policy-makers, educators, parents, and the public want to know if our schools are successful; they want evidence of what is working well and where the education system is falling short.

PISA states in their Handbook on Global Competence:

“Every school should encourage its students to try and make sense of the most pressing issues defining our times. The high demands placed on schools to help their students cope and succeed in an increasingly interconnected environment can only be met if education systems define new learning objectives based on a solid framework, and use different types of assessment to reflect on the effectiveness of their initiatives and teaching practices. In this context, PISA aims to provide a comprehensive overview of education systems’ efforts to create learning environments that invite young people to understand the world beyond their immediate environment, interact with others with respect for their rights and dignity, and take action towards building sustainable and thriving communities. A fundamental goal of this work is to support evidence-based decisions on how to improve curricula, teaching, assessments and schools’ responses to cultural diversity in order to prepare young people to become global citizens.“ 

Traditional ways of measuring success - personally and as a nation - are often linked with economic outcomes, and social status. In a world where these may no longer hold value, we need to consider new ways of thinking about success. We need to broaden the definition of school/kura success by expanding the indicators used to measure progress towards that goal.

Many of the current local and international approaches to measuring and reporting on educational quality have tended to be limited to literacy, numeracy and science achievement. These measures are necessary but not sufficient. A growing chorus of voices is asking, “Isn’t education about more than that? Don’t we need healthy kids who can think; who are innovative and will grow up to be engaged citizens?” When there is too much emphasis on narrow goals, important priorities can be overshadowed. 

The national curriculum mandates a competency-based approach. Competency-based assessment is a process where the teacher/kaiako works with the learner to collect evidence of competence, using the criteria provided in the assessment brief or in the national qualifications. It is not about passing or failing a candidate; evidence collection is more than just setting a test.

The New Zealand Curriculum defines key competencies as "capabilities for living and lifelong learning" (p.12). Using "capability" makes us focus on what students / ākonga are capable of doing and becoming, and how they use their understandings/knowledge, skills and values in particular learning contexts. This has implications for how we think about the types of learning experiences that will really stretch students as they encounter purposeful key competency/learning area combinations.

Our understanding of some common approaches to measuring success, used in New Zealand and elsewhere, are summarised in this table. In most cases these are all represented in the approaches taken to developing curriculum, but often one may be more dominant than others: 

Most schools, regions or nations are likely to use a combination of the approaches described here; the important thing is recognising where there may be a greater emphasis, and where particular characteristics are not being addressed.

For example, an over-emphasis on skills and/or knowledge at the expense of developing capabilities and transferring that into social action is likely to produce young people who are not adequately prepared to face the challenges ahead. Conversely, a programme focused on social action projects without ensuring the development of key skills, or the ability to engage with information and knowledge, may mean students have a well developed sense of social responsibility, but lack the foundational skills and knowledge to be able to do anything about it.

But how do we measure success across all four categories? For the first two the answer is reasonably straightforward, as we have had measures for skill development and knowledge acquisition in our traditional education system for more than a century. The challenge looms when we consider how we might measure success in the third and fourth categories, where the kinds of observable, ‘testable’ measures cannot be applied in the same way, and where evidence of development may occur across longer time periods than a single academic year.

What examples of this can I see?

The following examples are selected to provide insights into the range of ways organisations are approaching the issue of measuring success:

• The Curriculum Progress and Achievement Ministerial Advisory Group (MAG) has recently published a conversation document in which the section on building assessment, inquiry and evaluation capability (p.16) states that all stakeholders will have the assessment information and evaluative capabilities they need to do their jobs well and we will have achieved a stronger focus on student progress across the system through rich opportunities to learn.
• The Minister’s foreword in the Digital Technologies - Hangarau Matahiko addition to the Technology learning area begins with “New Zealanders are now living in a digital society. Our young people need to be confident and fully equipped to contribute and flourish in the economy of the future.” The development of this curriculum content was driven to a large extent by industry requiring more young people to be prepared with future focused skills.
• The OECD is now focusing attention on the development of capabilities. They define global competence as the capacity to examine local, global, and intercultural issues, to understand and appreciate the perspectives and worldviews of others, to engage in open, appropriate, and effective interactions with people from different cultures, and to act for collective well-being and sustainable development.
• In an open letter to the New Zealand public, 100 NZ companies including Xero, ASB, Noel Leeming, Vector, and SkyCity, have said they would be more open to hiring those without tertiary qualifications to fill vacancies.
• Micro-credentials are becoming mainstream in New Zealand, with NZQA recently implementing a process for approving these on the qualifications framework. In a press release on this Minister Hipkins states “Maintaining up-to-date skills will become an increasingly important way to improve and future-proof employability” (August 2018).
• Triple bottom line (TBL) accounting is a practice being embraced by many companies. TBL is a concept that broadens a business' focus on the financial bottom line to include social and environmental considerations.
• An increasing number of schools are implementing strategies to involve students themselves in the process of assessing their work and providing evidence to support that - for example, Stonefields School Sharing Progressions with learners.