themselves and with their students about what learning looks like. They embrace mistakes and use them to better understand productive failure; they celebrate success when deep learning occurs. When a learning culture focuses on achieving mastery, teachers manage assessment processes differently by doing the following.
■ Offering penalty-free practice opportunities
■ Allowing mistake making and productive failure by offering feedback instead of evaluation
■ Supporting growth over time by repeatedly revisiting key concepts and skills and monitoring later samples of work
■ Providing culminating results that celebrate the most consistent level of achievement at the end of the learning cycle
While the proclamation that school is about learning sounds obvious, educators, parents, and students have not always kept a laser-like focus on the purpose of school. Traditional school culture is centered on accumulating points, climbing the (grade point average) ladder, or simply getting it done (to name just a few contradictory mindsets), all of which contribute to an opaque view of school’s purpose. While most people believe that school is about learning in theory, their actions don’t always match that intention. In some places, the contrast between the intent of school and how school operates sends a mixed message about what truly matters as students arrive at school each day.
Clearly, achievement has many definitions. While academic achievement is the most obvious outcome of the school experience, there is an implicit curriculum that influences the classroom experience, and schools benefit when they pay attention to this reality (Fisher, Frey, & Pumpian, 2012). This implicit curriculum is not the focus of this chapter (or the book), but it is, nonetheless, important to acknowledge that school is not just a clinical exercise in learning. We must also attend to socialization, personal development, and many other nonlearning attributes. Most educators know the school experience is about the whole child, which means assessment is most productive if it is planned and executed through the lens of both the cognitive and affective influences that round out every student’s experience.
The Main Idea
The growth in educators’ collective understanding of the power of assessment—especially formative assessment—has brought learning back to the forefront. Teachers have transformed their practice to establish classroom environments that value students’ full achievement of criteria against established standards, regardless of how low or slow they are when they begin. This shift is not yet ubiquitous; however, the pace is accelerating as more and more teachers establish new classroom routines, habits, and practices. Establishing (or returning to) a culture focused on learning is the biggest idea that sound assessment practices bring to the table, and nothing embodies that culture more than when teachers use assessment information to be instructionally agile. And although both students and teachers can influence a culture of learning, the relationship between them is significant in establishing that culture.
Relationships Help Establish Culture
None of the assessment practices, processes, and strategies we provide in this book mean or accomplish much of anything unless teachers connect with students in meaningful, authentic ways. The adage, students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care has stood the test of time for a reason. Students can spot a fake from miles away—they know when teachers’ efforts to connect are authentic or not. Taking the time and making the effort to connect are non-negotiable. While it might not be possible for teachers to get to know every student on a personal level, it is essential that teachers know students as students. Understanding how students learn, and relentlessly persisting and insisting they do learn, go a long way toward maximizing the impact of instruction, assessment, and feedback.
Relationships put assessment in its proper context and perspective. Who teachers are teaching matters more than what they are teaching, since teachers can’t authentically get to what until they attend to who. By developing a connection to each student, teachers can begin the process of solidifying those relationships essential to maximizing learning. The truth is that assessment is relationship building. Assessment lies at the core of the learning experience for students. So, while initial efforts to establish a connection are important, the connections with students become stronger throughout the assessment process.
How teachers handle the various results of assessment speaks to the authenticity of the student-teacher relationship. The extent of the relationship is revealed during moments when students need extra time, support, or instruction. We cannot separate learning from its social context, which means assessment (and all that goes along with it) will either contribute to or take away from the established relationships between the teacher and each student.
Culture Creates Learning
The question of which comes first—culture or learning—is worth considering. Does culture drive learning, or does the approach to learning drive culture? The short answer is both because teachers and students must all actively contribute. Learning is a social activity and requires social interaction, which means effective teachers respond to the intellectual and emotional needs of students in real time. Since time is always limited, being instructionally agile allows for both efficiency (streamlining efforts to gather sufficient and accurate information) and effectiveness (using the gathered information in productive and meaningful ways that promote continued learning) throughout any instructional sequence.
Though both students and teachers contribute, teachers primarily drive culture because how they design and execute instruction, and respond throughout instruction, says the most about what they value in their classrooms. Both the overt and subtle messages teachers send through their choices create the social context in which students learn. And while being cordial and friendly is desirable, how teachers handle assessment is at the core of what students experience; collegiality on the edges won’t compensate for an assessment process built on completion and compliance. The integrity of classrooms (where actions match words) depends on assessment processes and practices that elevate learning to an unrivaled priority; otherwise, students won’t believe their teachers when they say, “We’re all about the learning.”
The good news is that most teachers understand that sound assessment practices seamlessly feed a culture of learning. Clarifying learning goals, establishing transparent learning progressions, assessing for learning, giving effective feedback, and making corresponding instructional adjustments all make learning the clear priority. As teachers establish or reinforce these learning-centered routines, the message to students couldn’t be louder or clearer—you’re here to learn! Even the slightest adjustments, such as beginning each lesson by defining what students will learn rather than what they’ll do, can have a significant effect in defining activities and tasks by the ends rather than the means.
Being or becoming instructionally agile is essential to establishing a new kind of learning culture. Nothing sends a stronger message than when the teacher is prepared to respond—often in real time—to assessment results that reveal where the student is compared to where he or she is going. Teachers can match their words to their actions by giving classroom assessments that result in student-responsive instructional adjustments. By planning for these potential adjustments, teachers establish a new normal in which their verbal and nonverbal responses communicate that learning is fluid, ongoing, and even non-negotiable.
Learning Creates Culture
At the same time, students themselves can and do contribute greatly to the culture of any classroom, so they solidify the classroom culture through their learning. Students aren’t widgets, so seeking a singularly prescribed culture of learning is nearly impossible, even though some principles and practices are associated with the most
