How Is Testing Supposed to Improve Schooling? Some Reflections by Dylan Wiliam - 0 views
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Seb Schmoller on 18 May 13Just published. I really liked this section: "Rather than data-driven-decision making, it seems to me we need a culture of decision-driven data collection-the data are collected only after a clear theory of how they are to be used has been developed, to be certain that they will be usable. The argument I am making here is that for instructional guidance, teachers simply do not need or find useful (and certainly do not want to wait, or to pay, for) the precision that the educational measurement community is used to providing. All this may seem like a counsel of despair, so perhaps it is appropriate to conclude these reflections by saying that I am actually very positive about the role that assessment can have in improving schooling. First, as Haertel points out, often the unit of action is the instructional group rather than the individual student. For this reason, Caroline Wylie and I have been exploring the use of single items that can be embedded in instructional episodes (Wiliam, 2011; Wylie & Wiliam, 2006, 2007). The response of one student to one item is not particularly meaningful, but the response of a class of 30 students to a single item does give the teacher useful information about whether to move on, or to review an instructional episode."