Rethinking Assessment and HFL Education pilot learner profiles for evidencing collaboration in the classroom

Over the last 2 years Rethinking Assessment has been pilot testing the concept of learner profiles through four small scale studies with schools in Hertfordshire, Doncaster, Greater Manchester, and London. We are really excited to share the findings from this early work through this blog series.

This second blog looks at our project with HFL Education which tested out how learner profiles could be beneficial in fostering and evidencing collaboration in the classroom.

The project aimed to support and develop assessment and pedagogical strategies that promote equity and a sense of belonging for all pupils, which is an important strategic priority for HFL Education.

Beginning in September 2022, seven schools across Hertfordshire (that were already using a Learning Powered Approach to curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment) started co-designing a research project focussed on Year 5 pupils which sought to strengthen how collaborative skills are evidenced across the curriculum, and to ensure a broad, balanced, and ambitious curriculum for all.

The main goal was to design a digital learner profile that captures learning and achievements beyond standard academic data, which schools could then pilot and integrate strategies to support collaboration.

The importance of collaboration

Collaboration is more complex than simply working with others. To collaborate is an action where two or more learners pool knowledge, resources and expertise from different sources in order to reach a common goal. There is a distinction between interdependence and independence which provides some insight into the nature of collaboration. Collaboration suggests shared responsibility and an active division of labour within the group or pair.

Some key questions explored by the research group were::

• What does genuine collaboration look, sound, and feel like in the classroom? (how can we capture this?)
• What can teachers, pupils, and peers observe?
• What does genuine collaboration expect of pupils that might not be directly observable, such as mental processes, but could be reported by pupils if prompted?

Principles of the group’s approach to collaboration included a collective sense that:

• Assessment of collaboration is not a tick-sheet assessment criteria for each pupil
• Pupils can demonstrate different levels of ‘expertise’ in different contexts
• The language of an assessment framework helps inform teachers about specific skill elements to develop, but is not a target setting instrument
• The language used by the teacher and used in the framework needs to be understood by the learner in order to develop pupils’ metacognition and evaluation
• Explicit, planned opportunities to focus, teach and practice the skill of collaboration are crucial
• It is critical to define collaboration – essential for teaching and assessment purposes that the definition also is codified (operationalised) to specify what is observable and measurable

Defining and evidencing collaboration

Through a series of professional development sessions, the group reviewed the academic literature on collaboration and discussed a selection of frameworks from the UK and abroad. They chose a framework originally designed by the Holy Family Catholic MAT as a tool for commonality of language, providing a clear reference point for evaluation / comparison – not as a drive towards target setting. After focused co-design sessions, the group developed parts of the framework to create a HFL collaboration framework.

Once this foundational work had taken place, teachers then designed approaches to teaching and learning relevant to their context and curriculum, and developed learner profile prototype templates to gather evidence.

“One of the benefits of this project was in the discussion and sharing of the different ways in which the schools sought to integrate the teaching of collaboration skills into their curricula. By making collaboration a more explicit focus in their teaching and assessment, teachers developed a range of innovative approaches to pedagogy and curriculum design that will have positive impact beyond the scope of this project.”

(Ben Fuller, Lead Assessment Adviser, HFL Education)

What was the impact for the schools involved?

At the end of the project four schools produced a case study summarising their work. Two of the participating schools shared a snapshot of the project, below.

More information including outputs from each school case study and the co-designed learner profile template from the project can be found on the HFL Education website here.

“Through this project we developed a creative approach to teaching Science where children were no longer working solely in individual books and instead were working in groups, documenting their inquiry in group floor books, with a short amount of time at the end of lessons for individual reflection in their books… we used an assessment framework and adapted it to our school to focus on confidence, conflict resolution and contribution. The impact on learning and engagement was noticeable and we found that the children have made more progress with their learning in Science during this project. We found that group working, particularly, developed the children’s science vocabulary and scientific skills, particularly with the lower ability pupils who might previously have been quite passive. The higher ability pupils also improved because they had to include their team members and explain their rationale and it really improved their skills. We will not be going back to what we were doing previously after seeing the impact.” (Gade Valley Primary School)

“We chose to trial the digital learner profile as a method of capturing wider strengths and skills and for this part of the project we focused on our Pupil Premium, SEND and children working towards expected levels of achievement, and created a learner profile for each of these students using the profile template created by Rethinking Assessment… Staff knowledge about the children improved hugely during this project. Across a range of activities the staff were very surprised – from the outset – at how much information they gained about the children from working this way, and it changed their understanding of how some children liked to work, different skill sets they had that were previously unseen, and how they worked differently under different conditions and with different children.” (Cuffley Primary School)

If you would like to find out more about Learner Profiles and test the idea in your own setting, you can sign up to the learner profile starter kit to access templates and guidance here by scrolling to the bottom of the page and registering for free. You can also sign up for RA events here.