Shyam Barr

Blog

 

PREFACE

This blog discusses topics that exist between the fields cognitive psychology and leadership, teaching and learning. Although I make connections between research and personal experience (my attempt at bridging the age-old ‘theory-practice’ gap), I write for a general audience. It is as Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi stated in the preface of his book FLOW:

“To take this step is somewhat dangerous, because as soon as one strays from the stylised constraints of academic prose, it is easy to become careless or overly enthusiastic about such a topic” (p. xi)

To avoid carelessness, I will endeavour to include references to journal articles, books and alike (as commonly expected in academic writing), but not at the expense of accessibility and ease of reading. This will be a delicate balance and one I will endeavour to achieve.

To end, I chose the word ‘discusses’ in the first sentence of this preface, to highlight that although the blog articles themselves are very much a dialogue between myself and what I read, I encourage you to share your comments and questions, so that we may start a more authentic discussion. 

 
 

Is NAPLAN detracting from self-regulated learning in the classroom?

I’ve never been one to get too heavily involved in the political discussions about the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), but my observations of how schools approach NAPLAN have made me question whether or not NAPLAN supports self-regulated learning; the metacognitive process of planning, monitoring and evaluating one’s learning.

 

For 8 years I worked in formal leadership positions in schools, the large majority of these positions focused on developing the learning capacity of students (i.e. toward self-regulated learning). Each year, as NAPLAN approached, I witnessed a dedicated period to preparing students for the NAPLAN tests - a practice that still appears to be quite common in Australian schools. The justification was that students could familiarise themselves with the types of questions that would be presented prior to the NAPLAN tests, and thus perform better on the tests themselves. Deliberate practice typically improves performance, so it was no surprise that schools started to dedicate time to prepare students for NAPLAN.

 

Unfortunately, little improvement in NAPLAN results has occurred over the past 10 years, leading many (including myself and the NSW Government) to question whether NAPLAN is the best approach to ‘monitoring’ and ultimately improving the literacy and numeracy capabilities of our students. Although recent changes to NAPLAN such as online ‘tailored testing’ move toward a more personalised form of assessment, my primary concern with NAPLAN, similar to my concerns about other performance-based systems (e.g. VCE, ATAR), is that they narrow teaching focus, so much so that the promotion of self-regulated learning becomes a distant thought. Self-regulated learning requires explicit instruction of motivational, cognitive and metacognitive strategies in constructivist learning environments that promote student autonomy. Sadly, NAPLAN in its current form detracts from the promotion of self-regulated learning in the classroom.

 

I wonder if NAPLAN could evolve with the changing needs of our students, empowering schools and teachers to promote and assess students’ literacy and numeracy capabilities in a context that equally promoted self-regulated learning? Wouldn’t it be great if, at the national level, we were leading and modelling high quality teaching and assessment practices for our schools and our teachers?

Shyam BarrComment