Pet Hate: Assessment for Learning Objectives for Pupils

I can't think of anything quite so silly than this whole "Assessment for Learning" phrase that has been chucked into education as if to say teachers in the past didn't know that 'learning' was more important than just 'teaching'. Surely the very definition of teaching -good teaching anyway -is ensuring that some sort of learning is taking place.

Suddenly all over the UK focus groups are discussing ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING, speakers are invited to speak on it, OFSTED demands it and the head teacher re-iterates it at every opportunity with the greatest solemnity. The whole thing revolves around steering teachers away from presenting starter objectives that instruct a class to "do". Objectives, we are told, must be about what a student has 'learned' not what they have 'done'. To be clear, I am not saying that learning in a classroom is not important, but I am saying that more often than not the only way a teacher CAN assess learning is through what a student has DONE!

An example of a poorly constructed starting objective would be: "In this lesson you will complete questions 1 and 2 on Gandhi and his impact on the partition of India"

The much more preferrable alternative (we are told) would be: "In this lesson you will BE ABLE TO analyse the impact Gandhi had on the partition of India"

The first is direct. Students know exactly what they have to do, and chances are they'll do it! The second is vague, and yes, although it suggests assessment of learning rather than the accomplishment of tasks, how relevant is it to students?!

I always nod off and think of more important things when this topic is being discussed simply because it is one of those BRILLIANT IDEAS that is being over-analysed and thought-through to death. The other day we had a session in which we went through a nonsensically long list of objectives, having to comment -at length -about how well they fit in with the recommended Assessment for Learning style objectives. Yawn.....

To be fair...there are teachers that can teach and thereby facilitate learning and learning to construct perfectly structured learning assessment objectives isn't going to make a difference. Conversely, teachers that can't teach to save their lives might USE the objectives to appease the powers that be, but probably couldn't care less about learning....

As for students...they're just going to have to use up a few precious brain cells to figure out that "should be able to analyse the implications of...." really means "JUST answer the question on page 30 IN SILENCE".