Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemDevelopmental assessment and metacognition in teachers´ professional learning and differentiated teaching( 2014)This study examined the relationship between the developmental use of assessment data and teachers’ metacognition in relation to differentiated teaching and professional learning. The impact on differentiated teaching practice was investigated, analysing its influence on students’ reading comprehension. The study was conducted as part of the Assessment and Learning Partnerships (ALP) project. The focus of ALP is on the development of teachers’ knowledge and skills to make collaborative data-driven decisions about differentiated teaching within a developmental framework (Griffin & Care, 2009; Griffin, Murray, Care, Thomas, & Perri, 2010). The approach to professional learning in this study drew on the model proposed by Clarke and Hollingsworth (2002). This model describes teachers’ professional growth consisting of four domains -external, personal, practice and consequence- which are mediated by the processes of enaction and reflection. Reflection was unpacked as the metacognitive process teachers engage in when using data in a developmental approach. It is a metacognitive process as it involves teachers’ capacity to monitor and control their own understanding and learning (Duffy, Miller, Parsons, & Meloth, 2009). A five components model was proposed in this research to explain this metacognitive process, labelled as MC/DPL (MC stands for metacognition, D for differentiated teaching and PL for professional learning). It connects teachers’ comprehension of differentiated teaching and their capacity to plan, monitor and evaluate their professional learning. The relationship between teachers’ MC/DPL and variables under the four domains involved in professional learning were analysed. This approach to the research design is aligned with previous research in the area, which recognises personal and sociocultural variables that impact metacognitive development. The research is grounded in a criterion-reference framework and the variables involved were measured using Item Response Theory (IRT) (Rasch, 1980). Data from 578 teachers of 113 schools across Victoria were analysed to investigate the relationships between variables in the four domains and MC/DPL. Data from a subsample of 208 teachers, who assessed a group of 3952 students between Year 1 and 10, were analysed to evaluate the impact on students’ learning. The teachers’ MC/DPL process was found to be associated with the teachers’ professional learning teams’ (PLT) activities and engagement, in the external domain. In the personal domain a stronger association was found between MC/DPL and efficacy beliefs and assessment knowledge. All these variables were associated with differentiated teaching practice, although the most relevant were teachers’ efficacy beliefs, MC/DPL and assessment knowledge. In terms of impact on students’ progress in reading comprehension, the group of teachers whose students reached the top 10 percent of improvement had significantly higher levels in the classroom practice variable in comparison to the group that reached the bottom 10 percent of improvement. This finding brings attention to efficacy beliefs, as the main predictor of the classroom practice found in this study. Overall, this study suggests that metacognition in relation to differentiation and professional learning as well as knowledge about the developmental nature of assessment are important for differentiated teaching. However, teachers need to feel confident in their capacities to teach within this new paradigm in order to be able to change their classroom practice, and therefore more attention needs to be given to the support they receive through the process. Implications for teachers’ education and further research are discussed.