Expanding Notions of Assessment for Learning

Expanding Notions of Assessment for Learning

Inside Science and Technology Primary Classrooms

Bronwen Cowie Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research Faculty of Education University of Waikato, NZ Judy Moreland Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research Faculty of Education University of Waikato, NZ Kathrin Otrel-Cass Department for Learning and Philosophy Aalborg University, Denmark

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgement Preface Chapter 1: Our Aspirations Why a Focus on Assessment for Learning Interactions? The Promise The Challenges What this Book Seeks to Accomplish How this Book Tells Our Story  Chapter 2: Assessment for Learning Interactions: Setting Out Our Thinking Our Understanding of Assessment for Learning Taking a Sociocultural View to Assessment for Learning Interactions Teacher Repertoires of Assessment Practice Play a Role in Assessment for Learning Action Assessment for Learning is Dynamic and Distributed Over Ideas, People, Actions and Resources  Dialogue and Scaffolding are Central to Assessment for Learning Assessment for Learning Needs to Occur on Multiple Temporal Levels Simultaneously Assessment for Learning is an Influence on Student Experience of Themselves as Learners  Concluding Comments Chapter 3: Elaborating Our Context The New Zealand Assessment Context Science and Technology Education in New Zealand The InSiTE Project Working in Partnership The InSiTE Students and Teachers Teachers Existing Ideas about Teaching Science and Technolgoy  The InSiTE Units Chapter 4: Strengthening Teacher Planning and Preparation Why a Focus on Planning and Preparation? The InSiTE SubjectSpecific Planning Frameworks The Technology Learning Intentions Planning Layer

xi xiii 1 2 2 4 5 7 9 9 11 12 13 14 16 17 19 21 21 22 23 23 25 26 27 29 30 30 31

CONTENTS

The Science Learning Intentions Planning Layer Looking Across both Learning Intentions Layer The Second Teaching Outline Layer What was the Benefit of Careful Planning?  The Planning Framework as a Mediational Tool in Our Community of Practice The Planning Framework as a Mediational Tool in Classroom Practice Concluding Comments Chapter 5: Assessment for Learning Interactions as Multimodal  Moving into the Multimodal Classroom Extended Example 1: Its a Kiwi Whole Lesson Comment Extended Example 2: Making Percussion Instruments Augmenting Talk and Writing with Modelling, Demonstrative Action and RolePlay Challenges in the Use of Multiple Modes Concluding Comments Chapter 6:  Material Artefacts as Scenarios and Resources for Ideas and Interaction Why a Focus on Material Artefacts? The Value of Concrete Examples: Interacting with Real Artefacts The Use of Real Artefacts in Science The Use of Real Artefacts in Technology TeacherDesigned Artefacts Augment Talk Artefacts to Activate and Problematise Student Knowledge and Experiences TeacherDesigned Artefacts to Introduce Ideas  Challenges in the Use of Artefacts Concluding Comments Chapter 7: Pursuing Learning as Coherent, Connected and Cumulative Why a Focus on Time? Planning for and Responding to Student Learning as Connected and Cumulative Talk to Develop Continuity, Connections and Coherence Over Time Success Criteria as Source and Means for Developing Continuity, Connections and Coherence Over Time Artefacts to Develop Continuity and Connection Responding to Student Learning Over Time Concluding Comments

32 36 36 41 41 45 48 51 51 54 57 62 71 73 74 77 77 78 78 82 86 88 91 93 94 97 97 99 102 104 106 109 111

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CONTENTS

Chapter 8: Fostering Student Learning Agency and Autonomy What is Involved with Student Learning Agency and Autonomy? Patterns of Participation for Learning as a Social and Shared Responsibility  Routines and Frequently Used Task Structures Constructing Learning as a Social Process  Recognising and Crediting Student Ideas and Suggestions  Patterns Associated with Freedom to Move and Seek out Support and Resources  The Distribution of Authority and Sources of Knowledge and Feedback  Fading Scaffolding to Support Agency and to Share Authority  Creating Opportunities to Experience and Understand how Quality is Judged Activating Peers and Others as Sources of Information and Feedback Seeding the Environment with Material Resources to Support Student Agency  Fostering Student Affiliation with Science and Technology Attributing Value to Student out of School Experiences Attributing Students with the Identity of Scientist/Technologist Students Talking about Science and Technology Concluding Comments  Chapter 9: Concluding Thoughts Some Concluding Comments on Assessment for Learning in Practice  Some Implications for Further Research Some Implications for Policy Affirming our Definition of Assessment for Learning  References Subject Index

113 113 116 116 118 119 120 121 122 126 131 133 134 135 136 137 139 139 142 145 147 149 159

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to thank our teachers and their students who were part of the Classroom Interactions in Science and Technology Education (InSiTE) project. This book would not have happened without them and we are grateful for their involvement, co-operation and contributions. Our InSiTE project team consisted of the authors, Professor Alister Jones and four project officers. We especially recognize the support of Alister Jones of the University of Waikato who was a Co-Director of the InSiTE project. We valued his assistance throughout the project, as well as his insightful contributions to our developing ideas around teaching, learning and assessment in primary science and technology education. We also appreciate the input from Christine Deeley, Marianne Robertson, Barbara Ryan and Paula Wine, who were our InSiTE project research officers at various times during the research. We also acknowledge the contribution made by Donn Ratana of the University of Waikato. His beautiful book cover in black, white and ochre depicting various patterns in many spaces evocatively captures our idea that assessment for learning interactions are multifaceted, multimodal, and take place over multiple timescales. We are appreciative of the backing we received from our University of Waikato colleagues in the Centre for Science and Technology Education Research (CSTER) and in the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research (WMIER). The lively debates we had around the ideas presented in this book kept us on our toes We are indebted to The Teaching and Learning Research Initiative and the Ministry of Education, New Zealand, for their financial support in the form of a three-year grant for the InSiTE research project. Finally, we would like to thank our families for their backing and patience. Writing this book has taken a while.

ix

PREFACE

This book emerged from an ongoing interest by the authors in teaching and learning science and technology in Years 1 to 8 classrooms. The assessment for learning ideas evolved from our research in New Zealand classrooms over the past 15 years, and the Classroom Interactions in Science and Technology Education (InSiTE) project in particular. The InSiTE project was a three-year project funded by the New Zealand Government, as part of the Teaching Learning Research Initiative (TLRI). TLRI aims to enhance links between educational research and teaching practices to improve outcomes for learners. The InSiTE project had its origins in our earlier work in science and technology classrooms (Bell & Cowie, 2001; Cowie, 2000; Moreland, 2003), where we investigated formative assessment interactions and the role of teacher knowledge in these interactions. The InSiTE project aimed to examine more explicitly the development of teacher knowledge and practices for assessment for learning (AfL), the nature of AfL interactions, and student outcomes. Many of the ideas for the book are drawn from the report written at the conclusion of the InSiTE project (Cowie, Moreland, Jones & Otrel-Cass, 2008). Throughout the project we developed ideas that have been published and we acknowledge these publications here. In particular, two papers, one focused on multimodal approaches to exploring and extending students science ideas (Cowie & Moreland, 2007), and the other focused on creating and maintaining connections and coherence in teaching and learning (Moreland & Cowie, 2007), were launching pads for our ideas and the subsequent refinement of our research direction. In the book we focus on AfL inside the classroom where the priority was to help student learning. It is assessment that involves mutually interactive participation between teachers and students. Summative assessment is the term usually given to the kinds of assessments that sum up learning where a summary judgment is made about the learning achieved after some period of time. Summative assessments are not something to be ignored; however, they are not the focus of this book. Our focus is on developing understandings of how AfL interactions can contribute to classroom cultures for learning and also positively shape how students see themselves as learners and knowers. Throughout the book, we meet the teachers and students who participated in the InSiTE project. They are: Jane and her New Entrant to Year 1 students; Lois and her New Entrant to Year 4 students; Ellie and Gail and their Year 3 and 4 students; Jenny and her Year 4 and 5 students; Brenda and Martha and their Year 5 and 6 students; Grant and his Year 5 to 8 students; Carol and her Year 7 students; and, Tayla and her Year 7 and 8 students. The schools they taught in were of mixed ethnicity, situated in rural and urban locations, ranged from small (36 students) to large (578 students), and were either full primary (Year 1 to 8), contributing (Year 1 to 6) or restricted composite (Year 7 to 10).
xi

PREFACE

For the three years of the InSiTE project, we observed, videoed, tape-recorded, made field notes, photographed, collected teacher and student work, and interviewed teachers and students both formally and informally. This meant that our data set was extensive. For the purposes of this book, and following a thorough analysis of the data set, we identified a range of telling examples (Mitchell, 1984) to ground and illustrate our discussion. These were selected to bring our ideas to life with the intention of provoking reflection on the ideas at hand. Consequently, we make no claim that the classroom events we describe are necessarily typical of all classrooms; rather they provide insight regarding possibilities for AfL interactions within the classroom. They zoom in on episodes of five minutes or so, and zoom out to consider sequences of tasks and lessons to help make sense of the practice and impacts of AfL. Nine chapters form the book. Each chapter seeks to highlight the theory- practice interface, pointing the way towards practical means of enhancing student and teacher participation and outcomes from AfL, whilst at the same time contributing to theoretical understandings. While we acknowledge the complex relationship the ideas across all the chapters have with each other what we endeavoured to do is to foreground different aspects across the chapters to better understand each aspect on its own as well as in combination. In chapter 1 we set out our aspirations for our book. In chapter 2 we build on these and outline our understanding of AfL. Then in chapter 3 we describe in more detail the InSiTE study and the way we worked with our teachers. Each chapter from chapter 4 to 8 begins with a snapshot of the relevant research and the theme is then illustrated with examples from the InSiTE study. In chapter 4 we detail the ways the InSiTE teachers prepared for teaching and assessing science and technology to encompass the learning intentions currently understood as important for full participation in these subjects. In chapters 5, 6 and 7 we make a case for, and illustrate, the multimodal, artefactual and temporal aspects of interactions that enable teachers and students to recognise and respond to the ideas and practices students are developing. Chapter 8 describes AfL practices that contribute to student learning autonomy and agency in a manner consistent with the spirit of AfL. In chapter 9 we set out our concluding comments and some broader implications for policy and research. Our aim is to illustrate how students can be supported to take up AfL to enhance their participation in disciplinary practices (the what, how and why of a discipline) and their development as autonomous learners. We have not attempted to cover the field in depth, but focus on aspects of AfL that resonated with our InSiTE teachers. We present ideas that we considered interesting and hope that readers will find compelling.

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CHAPTER 1

OUR ASPIRATIONS

This book is about developing teacher and researcher understandings of, and ways to enhance, assessment for learning (AfL) interactions in science and technology classrooms. We illustrate that used wisely and with sensitivity to student needs, concerns and strengths, AfL interactions can contribute to classroom cultures for learning and also positively shape how students see themselves as learners and knowers. AfL interactions can promote profound learning experiences and contribute to student identities as competent people and learners. We often use the phrase assessment for learning interactions throughout this book. This is deliberate. We want to emphasise that AfL is embedded in and accomplished through particular kinds of teacherstudent and studentstudent classroom exchanges. These exchanges involve teachers and students noticing, recognising and responding to student learning, throughout the learning process, in ways that move learning forward. Our book hinges on examples from real classrooms and so we begin with a conversation between Jenny and her Year 5 and 6 students. We use this snippet to illustrate that AfL interactions impact directly on what and how we learn, and can undermine or encourage effective learning: in this case we showcase an example encouraging learning. The extract is from the beginning of the first lesson in a series of science lessons investigating flight. When Jennys 25 students were seated together on the mat, she asked them to Find a space, flap your arms up and down and fly for me. Go. All students [laughing] stood up and tried, but no one flew! Still chuckling they sat down again. Jenny instructed: Put your hand up if you could fly. No hands were raised. Laughter subsided and all eyes were now concentrated on Jenny. Jenny asked: Why couldnt you fly? Sheree replied: Because of our weight. Renata said: Cos our arms arent very fast. Chris suggested: Our shape and Kylee: Our gravity. Jenny then asked the general question: So how does that [gravity] affect us? Kylee responded by elaborating on her own suggestion: It pulls us down. Jenny continued: So, how come planes can fly and theyre heavier than us? Kamo: Cos theyve got wings. Sashi: Its the shape of the wings. Maiko: Its the shape of the plane. The students were now entirely focused on Jenny and her next move. In examining this excerpt we see that Jenny opened the lesson with the staging of a memorable event, Fly for me. This provoked a positive response from her students.

CHAPTER 1

They were totally engaged in the activity, personally, emotionally and intellectually, realising that this opening event was a prelude to something interesting happening in their classroom. Jenny deftly captured her students attention and encouraged their active participation with her questions. She expected that they would openly share ideas, no matter their credibility. She provided students with feedback on their ideas and at the same time empowered them as learners with respect to their own learning. The learning opportunities set up for Jennys students relied on a classroom culture of mutual support, trust and valuing of shared meaning making. Students were prepared to share publicly their tentative ideas and build knowledge together. We view this sequence as an instance of AfL in action, illustrating the social nature of AfL, the way AfL is both shaped by, and shapes, opportunities to learn, and how Jenny and her students positioned themselves as agentic learners together. Throughout this book we will use examples such as this to illustrate how AfL can constructively support student learning and students sense of themselves as capable and competent learners. By positioning AfL as embedded in and integral to the regular flow of classroom interaction, we acknowledge the crucial role classroom assessment plays in shaping student opportunities to learn and what it means to know and learn in a given setting. Classroom assessment shapes how students see themselves, how others see them, and the opportunities they have to learn. It influences their learning capacity and the kind of learner they become. We take the view that, ultimately, AfL is about learners having control over and developing the resources needed to take responsibility for and make informed decisions about their own learning. This view of AfL as the promotion of student learning autonomy is congruent with current aspirations that 21st century education support students to become lifelong learners who are able and willing to be active participants in a democratic society. Our book will, we hope, make a contribution to understanding how this might be achieved.
WHY A FOCUS ON ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING INTERACTIONS?

The Promise Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (1998), on the basis of an extensive review of research, established that formative assessment methods and techniques produce significant learning gains. According to their analysis, these learning gains are among the largest ever identified for educational interventions. Moreover, a few of the reviewed studies indicated that the largest gains were for students who had previously been classified as low achievers, thus reducing inequity of student outcomes whilst raising overall achievement. Assessment is formative when: evidence about student achievement is elicited, interpreted, and used by teachers, learners, or their peers, to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or better founded, than the decisions they would have taken in the absence of the evidence that was elicited. (Black & Wiliam, 2009, p. 9)

OUR ASPIRATIONS

Formative assessment involves feedback to students on their ideas and informs the differentiated teaching responses that are at the heart of effective teaching and learning. Black and Wiliams conclusion that assessment for formative purposes can enhance the learning of all, and not just some, students, identified it as a high leverage practice for the wider and sustained promotion of learning as well as learning to learn. In drawing out implications for the policy and practice of formative assessment, they concluded: There does not emerge, from this present review, any one optimum model on which policy might be based. What does emerge is a set of guiding principles, with the general caveat that the changes in classroom practice that are needed are central rather than marginal, and have to be incorporated by each teacher into his or her practice in his or her own way. . . . That is to say, reform in this dimension will inevitably take a long time and need continuing support from both practitioners and researchers. (p. 62) Subsequently the potential for assessment to support learning has been a focus for research, policy and practice worldwide. The policy value currently accorded to formative assessment as assessment for learning is reflected in the 2005 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) endorsement of formative assessment as a powerful tool in learning and learning how to learn: Teachers using formative assessment approaches guide students toward development of their own learning to learn skills that are increasingly necessary as knowledge is quickly outdated in the information society. (OECD, 2005, p. 22) It is not often that the OECD expresses support for what seems to be a micro educational process such as formative assessment/assessment for learning. The OECD has recognised that AfL plays a role in the development and support of student lifelong learning capacity and therefore is a priority in 21st century curricula and society (Black, McCormick, James & Pedder, 2006; Rotherham & Willingham, 2009; Shepard, 2000; Stiggins, 2007). The demands of the knowledge society mean that all and not just some citizens need to be able to take an active part in a countrys social, economic and political life. Several OECD countries now promote formative assessment as a key strategy for meeting goals for quality and lifelong learning. From a policy point of view, it is this promise that AfL can enhance the learning and learning capacity of all students that is of critical importance. In thinking about the implications of our orientation to AfL, we want to add a caveat. We acknowledge that while the teachers intention may be that their assessment practices foster learning, this may not always happen. In our view, by acknowledging the gap between intention and realisation, we allow for the complexity of the learning and teaching process and avoid placing full responsibility for the impact of assessment actions on the teacher. When the aim is to develop student autonomy and agency it is important to acknowledge that students have and pursue their own agendas. Students do not always understand or value their teachers goals

CHAPTER 1

for their classroom learning. They may not understand and/or may misconstrue their teachers feedback. When we are concerned with developing student learning autonomy and agency, teaching, learning and assessing become a joint and shared responsibility: it is teachers and students together who need to create a classroom culture that focuses on fostering learning. The Challenges The notion that assessment can and should support learning resonates with teachers, but nevertheless its introduction and integration into classroom life has proved problematic. First, teachers can struggle with the knowledge demands of responding to a diversity of individual student needs and interests in ways that move student learning forward. Af L relies on teachers being able to develop and deploy a range of pedagogical strategies to elicit and advance student learning To respond productively, teachers need a deep and flexible understanding of the topic being studied, they need a detailed understanding of possible learning pathways, and they need to know how to bring this knowledge together to provide or coconstruct feedback for a particular student/group of students. In the case of science and technology, the disciplines that are the focus for this book, primary and elementary school teachers have expressed a lack of confidence in their knowledge and ability to plan for and meet the needs of their students in these subjects. And yet, the increasingly prominent roles science and technology are playing in our lives today, and will into the future, make the consideration of how to address the challenges of AfL in science and technology education particularly crucial. Adding complexity, Dylan Wiliam (2003) reminds us that teachers need both knowhow (craft knowledge, or technique) and knowwhy (knowledge of universal truths), with one in support of the other, if they are to implement AfL in ways that support student learning and learning autonomy. Wiliam points out that knowwhy empowers a teacher to make implementation decisions that enhance, rather than detract, from the fundamental principle of AfL in fostering student learning agency. However exclusive attention to knowwhy does not meet teachers need for practical action in the classroom. Second, teachers can struggle to enact AfL in ways that meet the goal of promoting student learning autonomy (James & Pedder, 2006). A number of scholars have emphasised that implementing AfL in ways that empower students and develop their learning autonomy relies on teacher understanding, and valuing this as the underlying imperative of AfL (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Black, et. al., 2006; Gardner, 2006; Thompson & Wiliam, 2008; Webb & Jones, 2009). AfL that moves beyond the implementation of recommended strategies requires careful attention to, and often the renegotiation of, teacher and student roles and responsibilities. This process is one some teachers find exciting while others find threatening (Black & Wiliam, 2006). In thinking about this we have found useful the distinction Bethan Marshall and Mary James Drummond (2006) make between teaching practice that meets with the spirit of AfL and practice that follows the letter of AfL. They identified

OUR ASPIRATIONS

lessons that embodied the spirit of AfL as those characterised by a high organisation based on ideas. Teachers who enacted the spirit of AfL had a progressive or growth view of their students (Dweck, 2006) and a real sense of their own agency. They saw learning as a social activity and a joint teacherstudent responsibility. They were comfortable with sharing control of the learning with their students and were prepared to learn alongside them. Third, teacher and student understandings and experience of assessment can limit their appreciation of the formative role assessment can play. Summative assessment has tended to dominate policy and practice, with a number of scholars providing evidence that external testing influences curriculum and assessment in the classroom with these influences being mostly detrimental (Nichols & Berliner, 2007). The general question of whether or not summative tasks can serve a formative role and vice versa is the subject of ongoing debate which, for our purposes, also serves to highlight that teachers are not completely free to change their assessment practices the school and wider societal and education policy context enables and constrains their practice (Stobart, 2008), all the more so at a time when external testing for accountability purposes is being used as a policy lever to drive school change and improvement. So too do students, who may need help to appreciate that assessment can be of benefit to them and their learning.
WHAT THIS BOOK SEEKS TO ACCOMPLISH

In this book we take up the challenge of contributing to practical and theoretical understandings of AfL. Across the chapters we address how assessment can constructively shape learning and students identities as active and informed learners. One of our central arguments is that AfL is embedded in interactions that build on and from what students know and can do. We propose and illustrate the following: Productive AfL is embedded in interactions that are multifaceted, multimodal and take place over multiple time scales. Student learning autonomy is promoted when teachers deliberately provide opportunities for students to exercise agency within a system of accountabilities to people and the discipline. Productive AfL interactions are shaped by and are reflective of the way a particular discipline generates and warrants knowledge.

Though these ideas are illustrated through interactions from science and technology lessons, we believe the ideas developed throughout this book are applicable to other subjects. However, as these points make clear, we do not subscribe to the view that teacher and/or student AfL practices can be disciplineindependent. Generic strategies provide a necessary but still insufficient framework for guiding teacher and student practices. While a range of strategies can be used to help students make their learning public, teachers suggesting and/or coconstructing ways forward with students requires a broad, deep and flexibly connected understanding of the

CHAPTER 1

disciplinary landscape. Account needs to be taken of the way the subject domain of relevance is structured, the key concepts or big ideas associated with it, and the methods and processes that characterise practice in the field (James, 2006, p. 48). As Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (2006) noted, the learning and AfL demands of personal writing in English and learning about force in science are very different. In writing there is little by way of explicit subject matter to deliver and so feedback tends to focus on how each student might improve their writing. In science, there is a body of subject matter that teachers tend to regard as giving the subject unique and objectively defined aims (p. 85) and so feedback is more directly focused towards helping all students achieve the same conceptual goal. For students to take informed actions to progress their own learning over time and contexts they need to know what knowledge is important and how and why this knowledge is generated, legitimated, and communicated (James & Pedder, 2006). Relevant to this book, studies in science and technology have highlighted the social and material nature of knowledge development and legitimation, including the extent that knowledge in science and technology depends on the tools and resources that are available and the importance of collaboration and critique. We pay explicit attention to these aspects as something students should experience (Ford & Forman, 2006) in anticipation that this will help readers make informed use of our ideas in other disciplines. At this point we also point out that this book is informed by a sociocultural view of what learning is and how it happens. All assessment is underpinned by a view of learning and the learner and in our case the idea that learning and any assessment of it are more than a cognitive rational matter resonated strongly with our own experience of classroom research, particularly when we focused in on students experiences (Cowie, 2000, 2005; Moreland, 2003; 2004). Throughout the book we take learning to be a situated, social and cultural process within which an individual constructs local meaning for what is important to learn, what it means to know and learn, and also, who they are and might become as a learner and knower. This sociocultural orientation is congruent with current research and theory in assessment that recognises that assessment shapes what we learn and how we learn, as well as how we see ourselves. Within this sociocultural perspective, learning is accomplished through interaction between learners, teachers and tools (routines and material and conceptual resources) in a particular setting. Assessment relationships between the teacher, the task and peers are recognised as impacting on a students sense of identity and learning capacity. In a practical sense, a sociocultural view allows us to look beyond the individual student and their teacher to consider more broadly how the classroom as a setting might enable (and constrain), opportunities for learning. It focuses us on student agency and resourcefulness they ways students take up and use the ideas, tools, artefacts and people in their environment to understand and progress their own and each others learning (Carr, 2008; Newfield, Andrew, Stein & Maungedzo, 2003). In our case, adopting a sociocultural stance helped us to make the familiar strange when considering how and why assessment could support learning as part of everyday classroom life.

OUR ASPIRATIONS

HOW THIS BOOK TELLS OUR STORY

There are ten chapters in the book. Each chapter addresses AfL theory and practice. The chapters are set out in a cumulative sequence, although the chapters also stand alone. So while there is a sense of the development of ideas over the whole book, each chapter foregrounds and focuses on a particular aspect of AfL. To help familiarise the reader with how our book tells our story we next provide a fuller outline of each chapter. This first chapter has laid out our aspirations for our book including the potential benefits and challenges of AfL. In chapter 2 we outline in more depth and detail our understanding of AfL. We set out our working definition of AfL, detail our understanding of the key elements of AfL, elaborate on what sociocultural views of learning have to offer, and highlight that it is the spirit of AfL that matters and matters to us. Then in chapter 3 we describe the InSiTE study and the ways we worked with our teachers. We outline the New Zealand assessment context and science and technology education in New Zealand. We introduce our students and teachers. Each chapter from 4 to 8 sets out the AfL ideas that resonated with us, our teachers and students in the InSiTE science and technology classrooms. Relevant research is presented and actual examples from classrooms are used to illustrate our ideas. In chapter 4 we describe the ways the InSiTE teachers planned and prepared for their teaching and assessment of primary science and technology and we focus on how we used a subjectspecific planning framework to strengthen teacher planning and preparation for teaching science and technology. We also report teacher perceptions of the impact of using the planner on their confidence and ability to create and capitalise on teachable moments as part of AfL in their classrooms. In chapter 5 we make a case for, and illustrate, multimodal interactions as integral to the learning and expression of science and technology ideas and practices. This chapter focuses on our argument that AfL interactions need to be cognisant of more than merely talk; that AfL interactions are multimodal and that for AfL interactions to be optimally engaging and responsive, they need to be planned for and engaged in as such. We show that multimodal AfL broadens students opportunities to represent their ideas in a way that facilitates student agency, accommodates difference and supports the development of creativity and critical thinking. In chapter 6 we direct our attention to the implications of the material dimension of science and technology and explore further the affordances of the material dimension of teaching and learning. We show that when selected, designed and introduced with science and technology learning in mind, material artefacts can afford and subsequently become embedded in social knowledgemaking processes. They can form part of the meaning systems teachers and students develop and use and, consequently, play a role in supporting AfL. Artefacts can anchor, bridge, mediate and coordinate activities across settings and time, leading to a sense of continuity. Longer term processes and shorterterm events can be linked through material artefacts.

CHAPTER 1

In chapter 7 our specific aim is to show how the time teachers and students spend together can be constructed and used as a resource within and for AfL in science and technology. We illustrate some of the positive ways our teachers used time as a resource to help students appreciate the overtime and over space and contexts dimensions of learning thus experiencing learning as cumulative, connected and coherent. This is important in science and technology because, typically, there is a main idea or task that is multifaceted and takes time to accomplish. Chapter 8 describes AfL practices that contribute to student learning autonomy and agency in a manner consistent with the spirit of AfL. We show how the InSiTE teachers cultivated a classroom community that focused on and fostered student learning and learning autonomy through patterns of participation that construed learning as a social practice and shared responsibility, through the distribution of authority and agency, and by encouraging and supporting student affiliation with subject disciplines. In chapter 9, our final chapter, we provide some concluding thoughts about AfL in practice and consider implications related to research and policy. The ideas presented in our book are intended to support teachers in their everyday work in their classrooms. The book is written for primary teachers and educational researchers who want to examine AfL from a theoretical and a practical perspective. We think that the AfL interactions we examine will help teachers understand the what, how and why of AfL. Nevertheless, we do not claim to have all the answers; rather we present AfL as a messy business, both conceptually and practically. We see AfL as a workinprogress, but one worth pursuing because of the considerable benefits it promises.

CHAPTER 2

ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING INTERACTIONS: SETTING OUT OUR THINKING

Before we meet the InSiTE teachers and students, we want to deepen our discussion about AfL. We begin by setting out our working definition of AfL and then we detail our understanding of the key elements of AfL as it plays out as part of classroom practice. Next, we elaborate on what sociocultural views of learning have to offer in terms of observing, understanding and developing classroom practice. We highlight that AfL cannot simply be added to a teachers pedagogical repertoire, and though this is not a new argument, this point serves to foreground that AfL is more than a technical activityit is the spirit of AfL that is important and important to us.
OUR UNDERSTANDING OF ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING

It is important to be clear about our meaning for and understandings of the elements of effective AfL. The definition of AfL that we begin with builds on our earlier work (Bell & Cowie, 2001; Cowie & Bell, 1999; Moreland, 2003) and incorporates recent thinking in the field (Black & Wiliam, 2009; Crooks, 2011; RuizPrimo, 2011; Wiliam, 2011). It is as follows: Assessment for learning encompasses those everyday classroom practices through which teachers, peers and learners seek/notice, recognise and respond to student learning, throughout the learning, in ways that aim to enhance student learning and student learning capacity and autonomy. This definition reflects our view that AfL is integral to teaching and learning. It makes clear that AfL is a process, and not a task, and that this process is centred on teachers and students using information on students learning to, in Royce Sadlers (1989) terms, close the gap between students current level of performance and a desired level of performance (see also Black & Wiliam, 2009; Shepard, 2009; Wiliam & Thompson, 2007). Sadler offered the following questions as explicating this process: Where is the learner going? Where is the learner right now? How can the learner get there? (see also Atkin, Black & Coffey, 2001). Consideration of where a learner is going requires clarification of the intended learning goals and of what will count as the evidence and the success criteria that demonstrate these goals have been achieved. Where a learner is now involves the generation and interpretation of evidence about the impact of teaching tasks and what students do, and do not know and what they can and cannot do and why. The final question relates to actions that might be taken to move learning forward.

CHAPTER 2

Dylan Wiliam and Marnie Thompson (2007) explicated the implications of the processes embedded in Sadlers questions by crossing them with the people who might take action (teacher, peer, learner). They developed five key strategies as central to teacher and student use of evidence to adapt and guide teaching and learning: clarifying, sharing and understanding learning intentions and criteria for success; engineering effective classroom discussions, questions, and tasks that elicit evidence of learning; providing feedback that moves learners forward; activating students as instructional resources for one another; and, activating students as the owners of their own learning. These strategies capture the essence of AfL, positioning it as an interactive and responsive process which teachers and students engage in together to guide and scaffold learning. Wiliam and Thompsons classroom work indicated these strategies could be instantiated through a variety of techniques. Indeed, the techniques teachers used varied substantially from class to class, topic to topic, and teacher to teacher, as teachers customised their AfL practices to meet the needs of their students, the particular subject matter, and their own teaching style. This suggests the strategies strike a useful balance between providing a solid basis for informed action and space for teachers to take advantage of local opportunities. In various forms the strategies appear throughout the illustrative examples in this book. The definition set out above explicitly construes AfL as a process that contributes to student learning in the present, and to their ability to meet their own learning needs into the future (Boud, 2000). It makes clear that we are concerned with developing students learning autonomy and capacity. What is less explicit in the definition as it stands is our understanding of what is to be learned: What goals ought learners be pursuing, and what is it that teachers, peers and learners need to notice, recognise and respond to for learning to progress? The answer to these questions depends on what it is considered important to learn and how we think learning occurs. We are interested in supporting students to develop subject specific expertise where this includes their knowing about and appreciating what counts as knowledge and how knowledge is generated and legitimated in science/technology. We are interested in students developing an interest in and affiliation with these subjects in both the short term and longer term (Kelly, Luke & Green, 2008) and so we add a statement to the original definition to better reflect our understanding of AfL as having a discipline specific aspect: Assessment for learning encompasses those everyday classroom practices through which teachers, peers and learners seek/notice, recognise and respond to student learning, throughout the learning, in ways that aim to enhance student learning and student learning capacity and autonomy. Assessment for learning also needs to reflect, be responsive to, and build on from how particular disciplines generate and legitimize meaning. Throughout the book we provide examples to illustrate our definition. We show teachers using AfL to help students develop their learning capabilities and autonomy as well as examples of teachers using AfL to help students learn science and technology.

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TAKING A SOCIOCULTURAL VIEW TO ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING INTERACTIONS

In this book we join with others in turning to sociocultural theories of learning to describe and explain the dynamics of assessment in classrooms (e.g. Black & Wiliam, 2006; Elwood, 2006; James, 2006; Moss, Pullin, Gee, Haertel & Young, 2008; Pryor & Crossouard, 2008; Stobart, 2008; Willis, 2011). The shift to value AfL may be traced to a shift towards more constructivist views of learning (Gipps, 1999; Shepard, 2000). In this view students are positioned as active meaning makers building new understandings on the basis of their prior knowledge and experience. It is not possible to assume a direct link between teaching and learning and so teachers need to monitor the sense students are making during, and not just at the end, of an activity. However, a sole focus on individual student conceptual change has proved to have a variable and somewhat limited impact. John Pryor and Harry Torrance (1996) persuasively illustrate that a purely conceptual focus underplays the complexity of classrooms because it overlooks social and cultural aspects of learning. From within a sociocultural perspective learning, its motivations, expression and development, are understood as mediated by the social, material, temporal, historical and cultural setting in which it is taking place (Wertsch, 1991). The implication of this is that learning and any evidence of learning cannot be separated from the setting where the learning is occurring. Just as importantly learning, from a sociocultural perspective involves the transformation of identity: learning involves becoming more proficient in the valued activities of a community (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Thus, learning science/technology involves students in developing an appreciation of how scientists and technologists see, value and act to generate, authenticate and use knowledge. As James Gee (2008) explains: Any actual domain of knowledge, academic or not, is first and foremost a set of activities (special ways of acting and interacting so as to produce and use knowledge) and experiences (special ways of seeing, valuing, and being in the world). Physicists do physics. They talk physics. And when they are being physicists, they see and value the world in a different way than do non physicists. (p. 200, italics in the original) A sociocultural orientation to assessment therefore directs attention to the interaction between teachers, students and tasks in a particular setting as these evolve over time. Classroom assessment practices are understood as playing an important role in shaping individual and collective understandings about what it is important to learn, what learning is and who learners are (Haertel, Moss, Pullin & Gee, 2008, p. 9). This stance requires us to consider carefully what opportunities and resources students have to learn and demonstrate their learning for them to be considered successful. We have found that a sociocultural orientation to AfL view offers a range of ideas and fresh insights into the implications and formative potential of commonplace

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classroom activities. For the purposes of our analysis in this book, we focus on several of these as offering ways forward for the practice of AfL interactions: Teacher repertoires of assessment practice play a role in AfL action; AfL is dynamic and distributed over ideas, people, actions and resources; Dialogue and scaffolding are central to AfL; AfL needs to occur on multiple temporal levels simultaneously; and AfL is an influence on student experience of themselves as learners.

Following, we elaborate on these ideas. Teacher Repertoires of Assessment Practice Play a Role in Assessment for Learning Action Our definition of AfL relies on teachers accessing and responding to information about student learning. Being able to ask the right questions at the right time, and have at the ready a rich repertoire of tasks and strategies that will help students identify and take the next steps in their learning journey, requires knowledge of subject matter, the understandings particular students hold, and, the types of tasks likely to motivate and engage them in reviewing and revising their ideas/practices. Knowledge of the ideas, experiences and preferences students are likely to bring to a particular learning outcome and the likely pathway of progression in student learning of that outcome is also important (Heritage, 2010; Wilson, 2009). In this book we use Lee Shulmans (1987) notion of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) to encapsulate these demands on teachers. Shulman describes PCK as the blending of content knowledge with pedagogical knowledge. It encompasses knowledge of how to teach specific disciplinary ideas and skills to particular students, both individually and in groups. Shulman explains the intellectual shift involved for teachers in the development of PCK as follows: from being able to comprehend subject matter for themselves to becoming able to elucidate subject matter in new ways, reorganise and partition it, clothe it in activities and emotions, in metaphors and exercises, and in examples and demonstrations, so that it can be grasped by students (p. 13). They need to select appropriate analogies, examples, demonstrations, simulations, and the like to build a bridge between the teachers comprehension and that desired for the students. (p. 16) This definition resonates with Sadlers (1989) description of formative assessment as requiring the exercise and development of connoisseurship, by teachers and also by students. PCK is not a fixed and static body of knowledge; rather teachers need to deploy and/or build it on the fly if they are to respond productively in the moment. PCK is not inthehead knowledge but rather a complex set of interactions involving action, and analysis and affect (Shulman, 2003, cited in Boaler, 2003, p. 12). Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (2009) provide a useful description of this dynamic

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when they explain, it is clear that formative assessment is concerned with the creation of, and capitalization upon, moments of contingency in instruction for the purpose of the regulation of learning processes (p. 10). It is this combination of creating and capitalising on moments for interaction around ideas that is required for teachers to realise the full promise of AfL. Across a number of studies, Judy Moreland and her colleagues found that teacher PCK, as the repertories of understanding and practice teachers had, could constrain and or enable their AfL practices (Jones & Moreland, 2004, 2005; Moreland & Cowie, 2009; Moreland, Cowie & Jones, 2007). PCK was not however a fixed or static quality. To respond productively in the moment teachers often needed to build and deploy it spontaneously. Working with their primary technology teachers, Alister Jones and Judy Moreland found teacher PCK could be enhanced by the use of a planning framework. The planner helped the teachers articulate and develop the content knowledge and the PCK they needed to design instructional tasks that would engage students in learning activities that were, as directly as possible, instantiations of their goals for student learning (see also Shepard, 2006). With a clearer understanding of what they wanted their students to learn, the teachers were better able to access and build upon student thinking in ways that developed it from nave to more sophisticated. With this preparation they were better able to make sense of, guide and respond to student learning (Jones & Moreland, 2003). In chapter 4 we examine the use of a twopart planning framework to develop teachers PCK in more detail. During the InSiTE project we observed the difference a teachers command of transforming subject matter makes in promoting student learning. Teachers perceptions on the impact of using a subjectspecific planning framework and gaining more from teachable moments as part of AfL interactions in their classrooms are reported. Assessment for Learning is Dynamic and Distributed Over Ideas, People, Actions and Resources For teachers and researchers working within a sociocultural stance the challenge is one of fostering productive interactions among learners and the learning environment when the learner and the environment are considered to be mutually influential, constitutive and evolving (Elwood, 2006). Caroline Gipps (1999) confirms that a dynamic and distributed view of assessment is congruent with a sociocultural view of learning: Put most simply, the requirement is to assess process as well as product; the conception must be dynamic rather than static (Lunt, 1994), and attention must be paid to the social and cultural context of both learning and assessment. (p. 375) Through this description Gipps acknowledges that learning, its motivation, development and expression are shaped, framed and resourced by the teacher student tasksetting relationships and interactions and points out that assessment needs to take these into account.

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Classroom studies have identified that in practice teacher AfL ranges along a continuum of planned and more formal to contingent, opportunistic and more informal teacher interactions and actions. Based on their classroom observations and discussions with teachers, Bronwen Cowie and Beverley Bell (1999) distinguish between planned and interactive (formative) assessment. The teachers used planned tasks to generate information on the classs learning in relation to what they had planned for their students to learn. Interactive assessment happened as part of learning activities and usually involved teachers interacting with individuals or small groups of students about what they were doing/thinking at the particular time. In this case, AfL was embedded in everyday classroom interactions and the distinction between teaching, assessment and learning blurred. Any and all activities had the potential to provide information that a teacher, or a student, could use to guide decisionmaking about the next steps for teaching and learning. Throughout the chapters we describe and illustrate the dynamics of AfL interactions as a meld of planned and contingent teacher actions. David Perkins (1993) coined the phrase personplus as a way of keeping connected all the variables associated with the complexity of this view of learning as distributed. He argues that it is the person and the surround (the immediate physical and social resources outside the person) that constitutes the unit of analysis, explaining his idea with an example of a learner as a student plus a book of carefully organised and detailed notes. The implication of this is that we need to consider what students can do with scaffolding and support from others rather than by themselves. How students take up and make use of resources in their environment is also of interest (McGinnis, 2005). Indeed, the way that students identify, take up and use the resources in their environment provides a meaningful way of accessing what students know and can do through their exercise of agency and learning autonomy (Carr, 2008; Newfield, Andrew, Stein & Maungedzo, 2003). This means we need to consider carefully how the learning environment is resourced with knowledgeable people, material and conceptual tools, norms and routines, and evolving information about learning (Moss, 2006, p. 366) because this shapes and frames students opportunities to learn and to demonstrate what they are learning. These ideas are illustrated and play out through chapters 5 to 8. Dialogue and Scaffolding are Central to Assessment for Learning Feedback is often described as central to AfL. A sociocultural perspective enables teachers to regard feedback as more than a strategy, instead regarding it as a practice that is embodied within the social practices and culture of the classroom. Within this view feedback involves more than the gifting of information from the teacher to students (Askew & Lodge, 2000), instead it is a dialogic process within which teachers and students learn about and from each other. The notion that teachers might respond in different ways with different students at different times with the aim of enhancing student learning in the moment is central to this understanding of feedback. Feedback suggestions focus on the learning process rather than just the

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final product because they aim to help students understand and guide their own learning progress over time. They focus on helping students making sense of criteria. Because learning involves identity work feedback as dialogue also invokes learners identification and affiliation with learning and being a particular sort of (science or technology) person (Pryor & Crossouard, 2008). Feedback as dialogue is iterative in that it affords students with multiple opportunities to learn and demonstrate learning (TrauthNare & Buck, 2011). While one toone discussion is valuable, whole class and group discussion can be used as opportunities for teachers and for students to develop shared understandings and negotiate next steps. Next steps and ways forward can be negotiated both between teachers and students and amongst students. Peers are an important source of timely feedback. Often peers have a deep knowledge of student prior ideas and experiences and the contexts that are providing the ground for the emergence of student current ideas and actions. Peers can provide suggestions to fellow students in language that is familiar and understandable. Dialogue around studentproduced artefacts can be an important and relevant source of feedback and insight, especially when teachers encourage students to examine, compare and contrast student work. Lorrie Shepard (2005, 2006) points out that the complete cycle of AfL can be seen to be broadly synonymous with scaffolding (see also Harlen, 2006). Scaffolding involves the provision of support and guidance by an expert other to help a person achieve what they could not alone (Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976). Important to us, scaffolding encompasses the notions of contingency and fading, whereby the knowledgeable other gradually withdraws their support as the learner gains in confidence and competency making space for the learner to take charge of their own learning (van de Pol, Volman & Beishuizen, 2010). Thus, scaffolding is a form of feedback that supports the gradual transfer of responsibility to the student. Feedback as scaffolding provides students with information about their learning and learning potential in a way that opens up opportunities for them to take better informed actions to progress their learning, which then enhances learning autonomy. Roy Pea (2004) reminds us that scaffolding has both a social and a material or technological aspect. Social scaffolding encompasses support for collaboration and the collective development of ideas. Material scaffolds feature the use of technology or designed artefacts, which contribute to achieving an activitys purpose. Haim Eshach, Yair Zeiderman and Yael Arbel (2011) note that for young children scaffolding also has an affective aspect. It needs to support student commitment to and confidence in their learning and learning progress. Sadhana Puntambekar and Janet Kolodner (2005) found that supporting the learning of diverse students required teachers to provide multiple forms of scaffolding over a number of occasions. Building on this, Iris Tabak (2004) presented the idea of synergistic scaffolds as a form of distributed scaffolding. According to Tabak, synergistic scaffolds are different supports that augment each other; they interact and work in concert to guide a single performance of a task or goal (p. 318) thereby increasing the chances a student will get the support they need.

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In chapters 5 and 6 we illustrate some of the dialogue, feedback and scaffolding we observed in the InSiTE classrooms. The extended examples in chapter 5 of Lois and kiwi and Tayla and percussion instruments provide evocative holistic accounts of AfL in action. Briefer examples are also used in both chapters to exemplify specific points. Assessment for Learning Needs to Occur on Multiple Temporal Levels Simultaneously Sociocultural approaches emphasise it is important to consider the development over time of the unique social relationships and cultures that characterise any particular classroom community and individual student learning pathway. Thus, there is a need to look across the scales of time (Lemke, 2001a). Neil Mercer (2008) reminds us: The process of teaching and learning in school has a natural longterm trajectory and cannot be understood only as a series of discrete educational events (p. 33). What this means is that while questions about what students are learning and where they might go next need to be asked for the short term and for the current activity, teachers also need to take into account the cumulative impacts of student classroom experiences and the overarching and longerterm goals for student learning. When we are intent on developing students as lifelong learners we need to ask these questions while students are participating in practices that have meaning to them in both the present and in the possible future. The need to focus on learning over multiple time scales finds parallels in a number of assessment studies (see for example Pryor & Crossouard, 2010; RuizPrimo & Furtak, 2006; Wiliam & Black, 1996). In theory there is no limit on the length of a particular adaptive AfL process cycleit can be accomplished within and across tasks, lessons, units and topics. It can usefully range in duration from minutes to days, weeks and the school year, depending on the teachers focus (Cowie, 2000; Leahy, Lyon, Thompson & Wiliam, 2005; Wiliam, 2006). Short cycle assessments are important if teachers and students are to build from where teaching and learning is at in the moment in a way that takes advantage of the social, material, relational and motivational resources in the immediate setting. While teacher formative assessment action in the moment is usually directed towards the task or learning outcome at hand, this action is usually framed within, and gains meaning and import from, teacher longerterm learning goals for students (Moss, 2008; RuizPrimo, 2011). Drawing on a study of Madeleine Lamperts mathematics teaching, Pamela Moss (2008) provides a succinct explanation of how teacher AfL, as a futurefocused activity, can take advantage of the present at the same time as it builds on the past: Attention to evidence was routinely situated in the ongoing interaction of which it was a part, cumulative in the sense of drawing on other available evidence (fitting this piece of evidence in her evolving understanding of student learning), and anticipatory in the sense of considering how her next move was likely to affect students learning. (Moss, 2008, pp. 251252, italics in the original)

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In this quote Moss recognises that teachers sustained contact and interaction with students can be used to an advantage because they can accumulate evidence of student responses over time and across different contexts. When this happens their feedback responses can build more fully on student ideas, interests and preferences for interaction. For the purposes of this book, we have adopted Madeleine Lamperts (2001) metaphor of a camera lens to zoom in on episodes of five minutes or so, and zoom out to consider sequences of tasks and lessons to consider how AfL supports, or not, student experience of learning as coherent and cumulative. In chapter 7 we show how the InSiTE teachers used time as a resource within and for AfL in science and technology. Again we use telling examples to show how teachers helped their students experience their learning as cumulative, connected and coherent through teachers using talk, success criteria and artefacts. Assessment for Learning is an Influence on Student Experience of Themselves as Learners Terry Crooks (1988) was amongst the first to alert us to the substantial and wide ranging impacts of everyday classroom assessment practices. He summed up the multiple impacts of classroom assessment as follows: Classroom evaluation affects students in many different ways. For instance, it guides their judgement of what is important to learn, affects their motivation and selfperceptions of competence, structures their approaches to and timing of personal study (e.g. spaced practice), consolidates learning, and affects the development of enduring learning strategies and skills. It appears to be one of the most potent forces influencing education. (Crooks, 1988, p. 467) In this very early analysis Crooks highlights that classroom assessment influences what it means to learn and know in a particular subject, exerting a powerful influence on student perceptions of the nature of important curriculum knowledge. At the same time, it structures students perceptions and experiences of themselves as capable, or not, learners and knowers in that curriculum area. As Crooks points out, this influence endures through the way it shapes student motivation and approaches to learning. What a sociocultural view adds is a more direct focus on the extent to which learning and what it means to be a learner is locally defined, a product of the relationship and interactions between the teacher, the learner(s) and the task at hand (Elwood, 2006). Writing from a sociocultural stance, Caroline Gipps (1999) explains how it is that everyday classroom assessment practices play a defining role in student identity formation. Because of the public nature of much questioning and feedback, and the power dynamic in the teacherstudent relationship, assessment plays a key role in identity formation. The language of assessment and evaluation is one of the defining elements through which young persons form their identity, for school purposes at least. The role of assessment as a social process has to be

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acknowledged in this sphere: Identity is socially bestowed, socially sustained, and socially transformed. (Berger, 1963, in Gipps, 1999, p. 80) In this commentary the social and public nature of classroom assessment is highlighted and linked to its power in bestowing, sustaining and transforming student identities as learners in the classroom setting. Gordon Stobart evocatively sums up this far reaching consequence of assessment as follows: Assessment does not objectively measure what is already there, but rather creates and shapes what is measuredit is capable of making up people (Stobart, 2008, p. 1). The students interviewed by Bronwen Cowie (2005) recognised the role that classroom assessment played in shaping their sense of themselves as successful learners and in shaping how others saw them (see also Reay & Wiliam, 1999). All this suggests that not only does AfL need to be insightfully tied to improvement but teachers also need to consider the social meaning of assessment and the learning identities it invokes, accepts, respects or is compatible with (Archer, et. al., 2010; Lemke, 2001b). Jill Wills (2011) in her study of affiliation, autonomy and AfL found that, students needed to be able to recognise that the learning had meaning for them, and could be part of their trajectory of identity (p. 411). A sociocultural view of learning emphasizes that what it means to be successful and to be seen as successful are context dependent. It recognizes that particular ways of acting, interacting and valuing are permitted and valued differently in different classrooms (Gee, 2004). How teachers and students are able to negotiate participation within the cultural expectations of the classroom and collaboratively build identities of expertise is central (Pryor & Crossouard, 2008). Assessment underpins and contributes to a classroom culture for learning and the opportunities students have to exercise autonomy and agency. When it is effective, learning autonomy includes the capacity and inclination to monitor, plan for and take action on ones own learning progress. However, learning autonomy is not solely an individual capacity. In the classroom, assessment is central to the discourse of power that constructs what counts as knowledge, who can have and legitimate knowledge and what resources students can access (Munns & Woodward, 2006; Torrance & Pryor, 2001). As James Gee (2008) reminds, for students to exercise agency they need to have access to the opportunities and resources to do so. The agency of individual students works within, through and against (Shanahan, 2009) the routines that are established and become taken for granted in a classroom. Given our interest in science and technology classrooms, we are concerned with what contemporary research tells us about what it means to be a scientist and a technologist. Recent studies in science and in technology have highlighted the situated social nature of knowledge generation in these disciplines, the role that contemporary questions and problems play in framing questions worthy of investigation, and also the extent to which current technologies (in the widest sensecompare a telescope with the proposed distributed radio telescope) enable and constrain the meaningmaking process (Lemke, 2001b). What these studies bring to light is that knowledge generation in science and technology is distributed across the resources

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in the setting: people, tools and ideas. As well, science and technology communities have agreed ways of working as part of the knowledge generation and authentication processes. Gregory Kelly, Allan Luke and Judith Green (2008, p. ix) explain: Learning disciplinary knowledge entails more than acquiring basic skills or bits of received knowledge. It also involves developing identity and affiliation, critical epistemic stance, and dispositions as learners participate in the discourse and actions of a collective social field. From this perspective, knowledge is not held in archives and texts, but is constructed through ways of speaking, writing, and acting. Thus, knowledge is continually tested, contested, and reconstructed through the emerging genres of academic knowledge in education. Current curricula in science and technology education recognise the conceptual, epistemic and social aspects of science and technology as legitimate and important goals (de Vries, 2005; Duschl, 2008). Students not only need to learn the what (concepts) of science and technology but also they need to learn how to do the learning in that subjecthow to think, question, search for evidence, accept evidence, and put evidence together to make an argument that is acceptable in that discipline (Haggis, 2006, p. 532). In our view the integration of these aspects contributes to students ability to judge and guide their own learning in a manner congruent with AfL that develops student disciplinary learning and learning autonomy and capacity. These ideas are embedded throughout chapters 5 to 7 and pursued in more depth in chapter 8.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS

AfL requires that teachers marry principles, strategies, and techniques with domain understandings and practices integrated into a classroom culture focused on learning. For teachers and students this will more than likely require that they think afresh about the purposes of assessment, and about their roles and responsibilities in teaching, learning and assessment (Hargreaves, 2004). Teachers need to believe and act in ways that suggest that all, and not only some, of their students want to and can learn (Black & Wiliam, 1998). Students need to feel safe to take risks, to explore their ideas and to make mistakes (Cowie, 2005; OECD, 2005). They need to feel safe to disclose what is on the edges of their understanding to make their ideas public and discussable. All this relies on a classroom culture where relationships are based on mutual trust and respect between and among students and teachers. Responsibility for learning and authority over what counts as legitimate knowledge needs to be shared between teachers and students (Greeno, 2006). It is in this type of setting that students, and teachers are likely to want to, and be able to, access the resources and feedback they need to help them develop new understandings of content and of themselves as learners and knowledge holders. When thinking about the challenges to AfL, we also need to be mindful that is not a standalone construct. It is one component within the wider system of educational assessment in operation in any school and country. The policy and wider societal

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contexts impact on what happens in schools and classrooms, and subsequently on how AfL is conceptualised and practised. Despite these challenges, AfL is worth pursuing because of the potential benefits for both teachers and students. In the next chapter we introduce the New Zealand context, the InSiTE teachers and their students, and we explain how we worked together to understand and enhance the teachers AfL practices, especially in science and technology.

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ELABORATING OUR CONTEXT

In this chapter we outline the New Zealand assessment context as well as science and technology education in New Zealand in order to elaborate the context of the book. We also present the InSiTE project through detailing the research aims and the ways we worked in partnership with our teachers. Finally we introduce our students and teachers.
THE NEW ZEALAND ASSESSMENT CONTEXT

In New Zealand the formative function of classroom assessment has been a priority since the late 1980s (Department of Education, 1989; Ministry of Education, 1994, 1999, 2007). Schoolbased professional development programmes have supported this priority since 1995. These programmes have been offered throughout the country, usually involving two years of professional development support at each participating school (Crooks, 2011). Teachers also have access to a range of New Zealand developed assessment tools including Assessment Resource Bank tasks, the AsTTLe (assessment tools for teaching and learning) resource, and government published exemplars that focus on curriculum and formative assessment principles. Current curriculum and associated policy statements (Hipkins 2010; Ministry of Education, 2007) continue to reiterate that the primary purpose of assessment is to improve students learning and teachers teaching. The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) states that: assessment for the purpose of improving student learning is best understood as an ongoing process that arises out of the interaction between teaching and learning. It involves the focused and timely gathering, analysis, interpretation, and use of information that can provide evidence of student progress. Much of the evidence is of the moment. Analysis and interpretation often takes place in the mind of the teacher, who then uses the insights gained to shape their actions as they continue to work with their students. (p. 39) Thus, the responsibility for recognising the value of particular learning is located firmly in the hands of the teachers who are in facetoface relationships with their students (Crooks, 2002). In practice teachers and schools employ a range of assessment formats (McGee, et. al., 2003) for summative, formative and reporting purposes, some of which are of their own design. Typically New Zealand primary teachers report to parents two or three times a year through a combination of face toface interviews and written reports that can include individual student portfolios and schooldeveloped report templates.

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SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION IN NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand has had a national curriculum since the 1880s. At the time of the InSiTE project, our teachers were working with the Science in the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 1993) and the Technology in the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 1995) documents. Both documents set out learning outcomes for students for the school years 1 to 13; students begin school at age five years and must attend school until they are 16 years old. The Science in the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 1993) set out four contextual strands, viz. Making Sense of the Living World, Making Sense of the Material World, Making Sense of the Physical World and Making Sense of Planet Earth and Beyond, and two integrating strands, viz. Developing Scientific Skills and Attitudes and Making Sense of the Nature of Science and its Relationship to Technology. The document emphasised that student learning should be undertaken in context and included suggested learning and assessment activities. The preamble to this document signalled the need for curriculum implementation processes to prepare students as future citizens who would need a working knowledge of science to participate as active and responsible citizens (science for all) and to meet the needs of those who might become scientists or use science in their careers (science for future scientists). The philosophical framework of the science curriculum was underpinned by a constructivist view of learning. Technology in New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 1995) set out three strands, viz. Technology and Society, Technological Knowledge and Technological Capability. The focus was on how people use technology to expand their possibilities, to intervene in the world through the development of products, systems and environments. The aim was for students to develop a broad technological literacy including developing models, products and systems in a variety of technological areas such as structural, materials, information and communications, control, biotechnology and food. Technological learning outcomes encompass conceptual, procedural, technical and societal aspects, reflecting the multidimensional nature of technological activity. The documents preamble signalled the need to develop school programmes that would enable and empower students with the knowhow to make informed choices about technology and to become informed members of a technological society (technology for all) as well as to meet the needs of those who might become technical and technological innovators contributing to New Zealands social and economic development. In considering how these documents set the foundation for teaching, learning and assessment it can seen that they emphasise both content and process the what and how of knowledge as well as according value to students linking what they learn to action in their lives beyond school. Since the time of our InSiTE data generation the New Zealand curriculum has been rewritten and now all learning areas are contained in one single document, The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007). This document includes a stronger emphasis on student appreciation of the nature of science and technology and on the competencies needed

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to be confident connected life long learners. It is an expectation that teachers will do their own planning and prepare their own resources for teaching, with these tasks often undertaken by teams of teachers.
THE InSiTE PROJECT

This book is founded on the InSiTE project, a threeyear research study of primary teacher and student classroom interactions in the subjects of science and technology. The focus of the research was on teachers and students in Year 1 to 8 classrooms and their AfL practices. The research involved working with teachers and students to investigate and identify: Ideas that teachers perceive as important for student learning in science and technology; Teacher pedagogical content knowledge and the ways it was embodied in teacherstudent AfL interactions; Interactions around science and technology ideas, the factors that afforded and constrained interactions, and the implications for what it means to know, do and understand science and technology; Student and teacher perspectives of interactions; Temporal aspects of teaching and learning science and technology for students and teachers; and Perceptions of the nature of science and technology and what it means to learn and know science and technology in primary classrooms in New Zealand.

These themes framed the overall direction of the study and informed our data generation, analysis, reporting and dissemination processes. Working in Partnership Our teachers were very committed to the learning of all of their students. They joined the project because they believed science and technology were valuable learning areas, they were interested in enhancing their teaching of science and technology, and they wanted their students to have worthwhile learning experiences in these subjects. They were willing to learn from us and from each other. One of the aims of the InSiTE project was to engage with teachers as active participants in all aspects of the research process. This was to gain a better understanding of and to enhance teacher AfL interactions. The study was structured as a series of cycles of classroom teaching interspersed with teacher and researcher meetings. Classroom work allowed the team to test ideas and reflect on their impact on AfL interactions and student learning. Meetings allowed for collaborative planning of teaching, collaborative interpretation of data and discussion of theory. As part of their commitment to the project, the teachers taught a science and a technology unit each year. In preparation for the teaching, the researchers and teachers met to jointly plan and develop the teaching programme. During the teaching

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two researchers were present in the classroom, each focusing on a different aspect of what was happening. One researcher followed the teacher, while the other monitored a particular student or group of students. Classroom observation data was generated in the form of researcher field notes, video recordings, digital photographs, teacher and student work, and conversations with students and teachers. Before a lesson the teachers often highlighted to the researchers ideas or activities they thought might be worthy of particular attention. After each lesson in postlesson interviews they would alert us to conversations or activities they considered particularly interesting, adding yet another perspective. We also shared observations that seemed significant to us. Our joint interpretations and reflections contributed to the development of a shared understanding of what had been observed. Alongside the classroom observations and teacherresearcher pre and post lesson conversations, six teacher and researcher reflective meeting days were held in each of the three years of the study. The spread of meetings, and the repeat opportunities to get together, allowed for the introduction, testing, refinement and extension of ideas by everyone. As researchers we presented our analysis of the emerging findings as a focus for discussion at the meetings. The teachers shared and discussed student work samples and their own planning. These meetings were taperecorded and any materials generated in the meetings were collected as data. The meetings allowed us to develop and extend our shared understanding of events, to propose and test out explanations and ideas and to refine the research and teaching focus in light of evidence. Through this collaborative process we were able to tease out more fully the multimodal and temporal aspects of the AfL interactions. The teachers were keen to share insights gained from their involvement in the research and some of them presented their experiences and research findings at conferences and to their school staff. Teachers received very positive feedback from their peers, some of whom have subsequently adopted some of the practices the teachers described, thereby highlighting the role research teachers can play in the dissemination of research findings. The research approach we adopted when working with teachers was one of negotiated intervention (Jones & Simon, 1991). The process of negotiated intervention takes into account teachers existing beliefs and practices, and focuses on negotiating with teachers the ways in which their practice might be developed to become more effective. The research team introduced new ideas as and when they were needed. They were also generated through teacherresearcher ongoing reflection of classroom practices. Key factors of negotiated intervention include an appreciation of individual needs, suggestions and ideas appropriate to those needs, and reflection on and evaluation of the development process. The process allows for renegotiation of further development in the light of progress. Throughout this process, teacher and researcher conversations allow for the development of a language grounded in a common repertoire of examples and a shared understanding of the goals of the research project as they are evolving. Over the course of the project, we came to conceptualise our joint involvement as a partnership in which

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teachers acted in support of the research process and researchers acted in support of the teaching and learning process. As researchers we were intent on both informing practice and generating new knowledge. While the teachers participated in the analysis of the data, in the refinement of the research direction, and in the writing up and presentation of research findings to peers, they were clear that their main goal was to enhance their practice. Acknowledging different but complementary roles, expertise and purposes within the collaborative process was an effective way of meeting the needs and expectations of both teachers and researchers (Ancess, Barnett & Allen, 2007).
THE InSiTE STUDENTS AND TEACHERS

New Zealand schools are given a socioeconomic rating with 1 being the lowest rating and 10 the highest. The schools involved in the InSiTE project had socioeconomic ratings ranging from 1 to 9, a comprehensive range, with only the highest rating (10) not included. The schools were also reflective of the different types of primary schools in New Zealand. Primary school years in New Zealand range from Year 1 to Year 8. In our study we had two schools catering for students from Year 1 to Year 6, three with students from Year 1 to Year 8 and one school with students from Year 7 to Year 10. Both rural and urban schools were part of our mix. School rolls ranged from small (36 students) to large by New Zealand standards (579 students). The ethnicity of the students varied from school to school and included Pakeha (New Zealand European), M ori (the indigenous people of New Zealand), Pasifika and Asian students. All the students we were involved with in the project over the three years were a delight to work with. Though we constantly indicated to them that they did not have to be involved, no students withdrew themselves from the project. From 5 year olds to 12 year olds, they wanted to talk to us and to show us their work. They were always willing to explain what they were doing and why. In some instances the students reprimanded us for not talking to them for long enough. They particularly enjoyed being interviewed outside the classroom. They revelled in the undivided attention of two adults recording their every word and taking photographs of the work they were discussing. We were enthusiastically invited to school performances, class outings and class lunches. We accepted all invitations willingly. The students were fascinated with what we were doing especially with the equipment we used. They loved seeing themselves on video and in photographs and enjoyed listening to themselves on tape. We could not have gathered the wealth of data without the cooperation of the students and we take this opportunity to especially thank them. Twelve teachers from six schools participated in the InSiTE research, although two, Gerald and Donna, withdrew at the end of the first year. Our teachers had a range of years of teaching and taught a variety of year levels. Table 3.1 shows the number of years our teachers had taught when they joined the project and the year levels they taught while on the project.

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Table 3.1. Years of teaching and year level taught Name Jane Lois Martha Ellie Gail Jenny Grant Donna Brenda Gerald Carol Tayla Years of teaching 17 3 16 20 32 5 20 13 10 5 17 10 Year level New Entrant1 New Entrant4 1 34 34 56 (1st year), 45 (2nd and 3rd years) 58 56 56 78 7 78

Table 3.1 shows that the InSiTE teachers years of teaching ranged from three years to 32 years. There is a spread of year levels taught from New Entrants (the first class 5 year olds enter when they enrol at primary school) to Year 8 (the last year before students enrol at a secondary school). Jenny was the only teacher who changed year levels during the course of the project. Our teachers had a variety of teaching experiences: Grant was a rural school principal, Tayla an urban deputy principal, Jane a junior syndicate leader, and others general classroom teachers. They also brought a diversity of backgrounds to the project but all identified that science and technology education had been part of their preservice education, though only five had subsequently participated in professional development programmes in science and technology. What was important for us, though, was their unequivocal commitment to their students and their keenness to extend their knowledge and practice in their teaching of science and technology.
TEACHERS EXISTING IDEAS ABOUT TEACHING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLGOY

We began the project by interviewing the teachers about their existing ideas about teaching science and technology. Their comments highlighted that student science and technology learning was only one of their responsibilities, but these were subjects they valued and wanted their students to learn and have positive experiences of. They reported that their goals for science and technology were that all of their students develop a positive attitude and interest in science and in technology and that learning should be enjoyable. They wanted science and technology to be authentic and relevant to students lives so that there was a real purpose for learning. They

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considered that handson activities were of value for developing positive attitudes and confidence in both learning about and doing science and technology: I think lots of handson they were so delighted they could make a light, their sense of achievement when they actually got the light going. Its hands on. They can do it. They can see whether it works or see whether it doesnt. (Martha) When talking about science, the teachers emphasised the importance of students learning and being able to use the language of science: [I have a] big focus on oral language like when I did magnets last year I have a list of vocabulary that I want children to learn, or understand about what they are. (Lois) I think one of the most important things is that the children are able to clearly articulate their science ideas. (Jane) Teachers talked about the importance of developing student investigative skills, intimating that they saw these as a key element in science learning, and revealing a view of the nature of science as involving designing and/or carrying out science investigations and fair tests: Id expect them to be able to construct and carry out a fair test and, obviously, to be able to write a conclusion using scientific ideas. (Carol) There was a general sense that they felt less confident about teaching technology compared with science. When talking about technology they reported that designing, making, and testing were key elements, revealing a view of the nature of technology as involving technological knowledge and capability with a lesser emphasis on technology and society. Developing the skills of being able to independently plan or design something and then to use the plan for making. (Jane) To sum up, our teachers were committed to providing their students with stimulating, relevant, and purposeful learning experiences in science and technology. On this basis we worked together to investigate AfL practices in the classroom.
THE InSiTE UNITS

Our teachers taught several science and technology units over the three years and it was from this teaching that we gleaned the illustrative examples used throughout the book. Table 3.2 sets out the science and technology topics taught by the teachers. We have listed the topics here to provide an overview of them and as an advance organiser of the examples and excerpts we have threaded throughout the chapters.

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Table 3.2. Participating teachers and topics they taught Teacher Jane Lois Ellie Gail Jenny Science topics Mixtures Kiwi Fossils Friction Flight Sound Classification Force Electricity Predators Adaptation Mould Technology topics Kites Kites Healthy snacks Masks Tongs Lunch boxes Percussion instruments

Brenda Martha Grant Carol Tayla

Stage lighting Cheese making Signs Traps Percussion instruments

Table 3.2 shows that a variety of topics were taught by the teachers in both science and technology. In science, the topics are from the curriculum strands Living World (biology), Material World (chemistry), Physical World (physics) and Planet Earth and Beyond (earth science). In technology, topics cover the technological areas of structural, materials, information and communications, control, biotechnology and food. Table 3.2 also shows that sometimes more than one teacher taught the same topic, for example, kites and percussion instruments. These doubleups came about because in our meetings teachers shared what went well in their teaching and, inspired by their insights and experiences, other teachers took up these topics for themselves. Throughout the book the examples we have used have been drawn from the Table 3.2 topics. Chapter 4 includes examples of teachers planning around some of the topics. Chapter 5 includes two extended descriptions of AfL interactions. They are Lois and the kiwi, and Tayla and the design of percussion instruments. There are also shorter excerpts to exemplify specific points. The following chapters also utilise short excerpts taken from all the topics taught by our teachers. In this chapter we have elaborated the context of the InSiTE research and introduced our students and teachers. In the next chapter we detail how the InSiTE teachers developed their planning expertise to prepare for their teaching of science and technology. We detail some of the ways teachers geared up to teach science and technology ideas and practices in a responsive manner. We describe their planning of multimodal activities, their attention to the planning of pedagogical links and their anticipation of pertinent AfL interactions.
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STRENGTHENING TEACHER PLANNING AND PREPARATION

A Planning Framework as a Mediational Tool

While the notion that assessment can inform teaching and enhance learning seems to have an intrinsic appeal, a number of studies have illustrated that the practice can be challengingall the more so for primary teachers in science and technology (see for example Atkin, Coffey, Moorthy, Sato & Thibeault, 2005; Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall & Wiliam, 2003; Sato, 2003; Sato, Wei & DarlingHammond, 2008; Thompson & Wiliam, 2008; Torrance & Pryor, 1998; 2001). Primary teachers generally have a deep knowledge of their students and a broad repertoire of pedagogical practices, but they do not always have an indepth science and technology content knowledge or a repertoire of science and technologyspecific pedagogies that would allow them to provide customised and detailed feedback (Goodrum, Hackling & Rennie, 2001; Harlen, 1997). In Chapter 2 we provided a brief overview of teacher PCK and its importance in the teaching of different subjects. We argued that teachers require more than an understanding of science and technology content to be able to effectively teach and undertake AfL in science and technology. To be effective, teachers need to transform their own subject knowledge so that, when they teach, their students will be able to make sense of the subject and the subject ideas and practices. Teachers need to be able to design and orchestrate tasks so their students can grasp the ideas and practices, yet at the same time teachers need to maintain the integrity of the ideas, the practices and the subject domain. Task design is also important from a sociocultural point of view as students ideas about science and technology are shaped by the interests, knowledge and skills of both the teacher and students, and emerge through their involvement in learning activities designated as science/technology (Cowie, 2005). This means that any classroom activity designed by the teacher needs to engage students in ideas and practices that are consonant with science and technology. In what follows, we describe how we used a subjectspecific planning framework to strengthen our InSiTE teachers planning of science and technology as well as their preparation for teaching science and technology. We have made a distinction between teacher planning and teacher preparation because in our view, though preparation is part of planning, it is less to do with a deliberate outlining of intentions and more to do with the active imagining of how planning might play out for their students. We also report on our teachers responses to the use of the planning frameworks, which became meditational tools in our community of practice formed around the goal of understanding and enhancing teacher AfL practices.
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WHY A FOCUS ON PLANNING AND PREPARATION?

Thinking about AfL and AfL interactions begins before a teacher sets foot in the classroom (Perrenoud, 1998). AfL practice requires that teacher have a deep and connected understanding of what it is to be learned along with the capacity to capitalise on moments of contingency. Therefore, teachers need to plan and prepare for opportunities for students to learn and for students to have access to the means and resources to make that learning visible in contexts that also offer some means for moving their learning forward. Common recommendations are that teachers specify clear learning intentions and match these to activities to realise the learning intentions, that they think through the big questions they might ask, that they have and/or develop with their students the criteria to be used to judge success or quality, and that they consider the links between their formative and summative assessment (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, William, 2002; 2003a). Many methods have been successfully used to help teachers develop both connected and flexible knowledge for teaching. They include teachers observing other teachers teaching specific subjects, teachers studying a subject, teachers taking part in professional learning programmes related to a specific subject, and teachers reflecting on their own personal classroom experiences in a particular subject (Grossman, 1990). Teachers analysing student work in a subject can also contribute to the development of PCK (Ball, 2000). So too can the analysis of videotapes of classroom lessons (Lampert & Ball, 1998; Stein, Smith, Henningsen & Silver, 2000). Additionally, welldesigned curriculum materials have been shown to support the development of teacher knowledge through the way they represent subject concepts, tasks, procedures, and teaching approaches (Ball & Cohen, 1996). Recommendations from trusted colleagues about what worked for them in their classrooms can also be a useful resource (Appleton & Kindt, 1999). In previous technology research (Jones & Moreland, 2004; Moreland & Jones, 2000), findings indicated that when planning and preparation focused on key attributes of technology, and ways to teach these attributes, the development of teachers AfL practices were strengthened. When teachers thought through their technology teaching alongside the technology learning they were aiming for, they maintained a strong focus on technology as multifaceted, and, student learning as contingent. Planning therefore became a starting point for the InSiTE project.
THE InSiTE SUBJECTSPECIFIC PLANNING FRAMEWORKS

Subject specific planners, partially designed with and by the teachers, were central to the development of teacher AfL practices over the course of the InSiTE study. At the beginning of the InSiTE project, we provided the teachers with a technology planner that we had successfully used with other teachers as part of an earlier project on assessment (Jones & Moreland, 2004; Moreland & Jones, 2000). This planner focused teachers on identifying the main technology task they wanted their students to undertake and the component knowledge and skills that students needed to

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develop to accomplish this task. During the InSiTE project we adapted the technology planner to better fit the subject of sciencethe focus shifted from the main task to the big idea. And, in negotiation with the teachers, we added a second layer of planning for both subjects. The second layer focused on detailing the teaching activities that would support the realisation of the learning intentions in the classroom and on how to make better connections and links between student learning intentions and the teaching activities. Hence, in their final form the subjectspecific planners had a twofold purpose: to help teachers to plan the activities for teaching and learning and to develop their PCK to undertake AfL. Thus, the planners helped prepare teachers to guide student learning through the two levels of management described by Perrenoud (1998, 1991); firstly by the setting up of situations to favour the interactive regulation of learning processes, and secondly by preparing them to provide interactive support for the regulation of these processes. What did these planners look like? We first examine the first layer of the technology planner and follow this with an examination of the first layer of the science planner. Then we examine the second layer for both subjects. The Technology Learning Intentions Planning Layer The first layer of the technology planner focused teachers on identifying the technology learning intentions for the unit. It prompted teachers to decide on the main task they wanted their students to undertake. This main task was then designed as the overarching technology outcome for students to work towards (for example, to use materials found on a farm to make musical instruments for a public performance). Then teachers identified the associated technological area/s they wanted to focus on. By defining the main task and the particular technological area and/or areas, teachers thought about the overall direction for learning within a particular technological area/s. The task and technological area identification then led teachers on to identifying three broad/overall dimensions of technology. These overall dimensions outlined the big ideas and the broad practices inherent in the main task. Usually there was one from each of the curriculum strands of technological knowledge, technological practice and technology and society. Next they unpacked these overall dimensions into more specific learning intentions in four categories: conceptual (knowledge and understanding of relevant concepts and procedures); procedural (knowing how to do something, what to do, and when to do it); societal (aspects related to the interrelationship between science and technology and groups of people); and technical (skills related to manual/practical techniques). This specification helped teachers to think about the specific learning intentions inherent and nested in the overall task and related to the particular technological area/s. As well, teachers considered how the learning intentions in the four categories might coalesce and work together in a holistic manner. When teachers were completing this first planning layer, they moved back and forth between defining the main task, articulating concise learning intentions within

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the four categories, and conceptualising and bringing together the technological practices embedded in the main task. This iterative process helped them to keep the categories coherent, interconnected, and consistent. So what did this layer of technology planning look like when completed? Table 4.1 shows Grants planning of intended learning for his Year 5 to 8 students signmaking unit. The students had noticed that when visitors came to the school they were unsure of where to go. This context provided Grant and his students with an authentic purpose for designing and building signs. Grants students had also studied complementary and contrasting colours in art. Hence Grant decided to link this technology unit to the previous art unit. We see that Grant has defined the main/macro task to provide an overall direction for learning, i.e. Design and build a sign for the school to direct visitors and students around the school. Below the macro task he has specified three overall technology learning outcomes, which help to clarify the macro task by identifying the underlying technological concepts and procedures in broad terms. The first relates to technological knowledge, the second to technological practice and the third to technology and society. He has then detailed more specific learning intentions of a technological conceptual, procedural, societal and technical nature. How he has detailed the learning intentions demonstrates his understanding of technology as well as his PCK. He devised these specific learning intentions especially for his Year 5 to 8 students. For example, in the procedural category, to develop 2D and 3D drawings to explore conceptual ideas matched his assessment of his students drawing capabilities. He has focused on the key ideas and skills within signmaking technology that he wanted his students to learn. He has also specified his assessment methods (self and peer assessment based on criteria, and a portfolio of work that will include plans, drawings and photo of finished product), indicating the importance he has placed on student involvement in assessment as well as the assessment of the product and the process. Grant is now in a good position to communicate and develop learning intentions with his students as is commonly recommended (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Sadler, 1998). More than this, these intentions have been set out as a network of goals that link and contribute to Grants overarching goal for the unit. In the following chapters in this book, we see how teacher planning for technology played out in practice, especially how teachers used it to help students progress their ideas and skills. The Science Learning Intentions Planning Layer Working across the two curriculum areas highlighted the subtle differences between the nature of effective teaching and learning of science and the effective teaching and learning of technology. These differences first became evident in the different demands in planning. The technology units revolved around students accomplishing a multifaceted, main task. When we tried to use this idea for planning in science we quickly found that it did not work, at least in part because our teachers tended to plan for science as a series of ideas and associated tasks. Reflecting on the positive impact

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Table 4.1. Grants technology learning intentions plan Macro task: Design and build a sign for the school to direct visitors and students around the school Levels: 2, 3 & 4 Years: 58

Technologyical area/s: Materials, structures & mechanisms

Overall dimensions of technology: 1. Develop an understanding of how to join wood to provide strength and durability. 2. Design and produce a sign including detailed technical drawings identifying characteristics. 3. Know about the variety of ways information is communicated and why. Specific learning intentions: Procedural LIs The children will: Research and examine different signs in the environment to identify requirements of design and materials used Develop 2D and 3D drawings to explore conceptual ideas Produce technical drawings of design Build sign in accordance with drawing specifications Evaluate sign through use of a questionnaire Undertake peer evaluation of signs Select signs for use in the school Societal LIs The children will: Understand that some aspects of signs are aesthetic and some factual Understand why signs are useful Debate if we can have too many signs Technical LIs The children will develop: 2D/3D/technical drawing skills including measurements, scale, labelling Technical skills for sawing, measuring, hammering, painting, sticking, trimming, glazing Model making skills including use of colour, cutting, gluing Skills for erecting signs

Conceptual LIs The children will understand: Purpose of signs Ways to communicate information Style and size of lettering Colours for impact Placement for functionality Use of icons and symbols Joints and construction Securing structure in the ground Materials and features Drawings can be plans for identifying materials and construction steps

STRENGTHENING TEACHER PLANNING AND PREPARATION

Assessment: Self and peer assessment based on criteria Portfolio of work to include plans, drawings, and photo of sign assessed against criteria.

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of a focus on the macro task in technology we began the planning development process by thinking about what might be the big idea in the science topics the teachers were interested in. The teachers found this shift empowering because they shifted to thinking about the overarching science concept that would have traction in more than the immediate context. For example, Jenny changed from planning a unit where her students were to learn about the praying mantis to one where her students were to learn about classification with the praying mantis as an example of interest. The science planning process then become one of identifying a key idea and developing a sequence of tasks designed to provide students with a range of opportunities and experiences to develop, elaborate on and synthesise aspects of this idea into a coherent whole. The technology planner was adapted for science in negotiation with the teachers to reflect this difference. The science learning intentions plan provided a space for teachers to articulate the main (big) idea (the overall purpose for student science learning). This helped our teachers to identify, clarify and phrase the intended sciencelearning outcomes in a manner that would be appropriate for their students. Another space was provided for teasing out as learning intentions some of the aspects embedded in the main idea. Of these there were typically three: a knowledge or concept focus, a practice or process focus and a nature of science focus. Next, there were also columns for unpacking the specific learning intentions in four categories: conceptual (knowledge and understanding of relevant scientific concepts and procedures), procedural (the strategic application of procedures and processes such as those used in science investigations), nature of science (related to, for example, what counts as evidence and methods appropriate for the communication of scientific ideas), and technical (practical techniques and equipment use). The specific design of this planning layer compelled our teachers to consider a breadth of learning outcomes, resulting in a broadening range of possible science learning intentions that they deliberately thought about, planned for and articulated. Table 4.2 is an example of the first layer of a completed science planner, developed by Lois for her Year 1 to 4 students (ages 58). The main idea for investigation was that fossils provide clues to the past. Lois knew there were fossils in the area and that many of her students had read in the paper that a child of their age had found a large fossil at a local beach. She used their curiosity about this event as a springboard to build on their interest and enhance the relevance of this unit. In developing her specific learning intentions in the four categories, Lois thought about what was appropriate for her young students. In the process of articulating the four categories of specific learning intentions, Lois was able to identify what she needed to know to teach about fossils and to address any gaps in her own knowledge. To help her close any knowledge gaps, she undertook further reading, talked with the other teachers in the school and the InSiTE study and consulted one of the research team (Kathrin) about the development of scientific thinking around palaeontology. First, Lois plan illustrates her ability to articulate her PCK as she has written her understanding of fossils into language and concepts that she believes her young

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Table 4.2. Lois science learning intentions plan

Main idea: To investigate how fossils provide clues to the past.

Overarching learning outcomes: Fossils provide a record of previous life and living conditions on Earth. Fossils can only form under certain conditions. Scientists ideas may be modified over time as they access new evidence. Conceptual learning intentions Procedural learning intentions Nature of science intentions Understand that: Scientists discover and study ancient fossils to find out about living things that were on Earth in the past. Scientists ideas change over time as they find and make sense of new fossil findings. Make: Detailed scientific observations through discussions, drawing and writing. Focusing and planning: Identify questions appropriate for a scientific investigation Clarify ideas Information gathering: Undertake observations Conduct experiments

Technical skill intentions Develop excavation skills Undertake scientific drawings

Understand that: Fossils are the remains of living things or traces of their activities. Fossils give us information about the conditions at the time when they were formed. Fossils are usually found in rocks. The formation of fossils is a constant natural process.

Assessment: Picture sequencing and explanation of fossil formation process

STRENGTHENING TEACHER PLANNING AND PREPARATION

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students have the potential to understand. For example, fossils are the remains of living things or traces of their activities. Lois has not only identified the main idea for the unit (the macro focus) but more specific learning intentions that will contribute to this. This suggests that she is in a good position to communicate, and help her students come to develop, the breadth of learning outcomes she hopes they will achieve. Secondly, it demonstrates the value she accords to her students appreciating how scientists work, which is one of the broader learning outcomes for science in New Zealand. Lois assessment task targets a key learning outcome in a way that will optimise her students opportunity to articulate what they know. The picture sequencing will provide a prop and a prompt for interactions. Looking Across both Learning Intentions Layer In using this first layer of the planning framework, our teachers were guided to concentrate on the breadth of ideas and skills they wished their students to learn in science and technology. In AfL terms, it guided them to identify, clarify and articulate their intended learning outcomes. A more balanced programme of science and technology resulted as our teachers became aware of a much broader scope of valued science and technology learning. As we pointed out earlier, the planning frameworks reflect that the different demands of teaching and learning science and technology: technology units tended to revolve a main task and science units tended to revolve around a key idea, albeit that concepts were important in technology and scientific practices was important in science. When teachers fleshed out the first part of the planner, its structure helped them keep the main task/idea in mind and also to consider the specific learning needed to develop and support student understanding of this task/ idea. That is, it helped them to conceptualise their intended learning outcomes as a connected web. The challenge for the teachers was that they needed to identify and know both the individual learning intentions and how to bring them together holistically. This was important because, for example, to develop products and systems, or understand science ideas and carry out associated investigations, practical and intellectual resources need to be used together, not individually or separately. The template also helped teachers to move away from planning activities for their students to do. Instead of what might my students do? the objective became what might my students learn? The Second Teaching Outline Layer The second layer of the planning framework was developed collaboratively with our teachers after we realised that they needed help to think about the connections between their learning intentions and learning activities and pedagogical approaches that would help students progress towards these learning intentions. And, from the firstyear InSiTE classroom observations, we noted that there were students who had difficulty making links between the science concepts being learned and the use of these concepts in investigations; and between technology concepts being learned

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and how they are played out in the design process. For example, we observed a class who were asked to design an investigation to find out more about milk. They had already learned about the properties of milk and made milk products such as butter and yoghurt. However, there was little evidence that the students were transferring these concepts to their experiment designs, or that they were finding out more about milk. The investigations did not appear to contribute to students cumulative science concept development. We also noted in technology classes in the first year that sometimes interactions were focused on the howto of techniques, such as drilling and measuring, without an attendant concern with the need to drill in a particular place, say, for accuracy. At other times in technology, teacherstudent interactions converged on students production of a particular artefact without a complementary push on the concepts or procedures integral to this process. Thus, how to make better connections and links between the different student learning intentions and learning activities was identified as an issue for planning and teaching and learning. The teaching outline plan required the teachers to outline, in sequence, the nested meso and micro tasks/ideas that would assist the students to achieve the main (macro) task/idea, the artefacts students would use, and possible interactions and student responses. The breakdown of the macro task/idea into meso and micro tasks and ideas helped teachers to think about how to connect various tasks and so increase the possibility that student classroom experience and learning was of a coherent and cumulative quality (Moreland & Cowie, 2007). However, teachers need to actively plan for how they will make the links available so that students come to understand the links for themselves in order to make connections. For link making to be successful, teachers need deep insights into: the conceptual terrain of the knowledge under scrutiny; how this piece of teaching and learning links with other subject matter addressed at other times on micro/meso/macro scales; and ways of engaging students emotionally in addressing the subject matter (Scott, Mortimer & Ametller, 2011, p. 33). Phil Scott and his colleagues make it clear that if link making is not addressed through teaching, then it is unlikely to emerge in students learning. The segmentation and sequencing of tasks required the teachers to think about their teaching tasks in a nested and interrelated manner. It was intended to assist the students to achieve the main (macro) task/idea by providing a coherent pathway towards the intended learning outcomes. It helped the teachers bring to mind and make links and connections to prior learning and experiences, and to think about how to forge links and connections between days, tasks and ideas. It also helped them link to and build on previous activities, so that subsequent activities deepened student understandings. In asking teachers to specify resources or focal artefacts to be used or developed within a particular task, we drew on a study by WolffMichael Roth and colleagues (Roth, McGinn, Woszczyna & Boutonne, 1999) in which they elaborated on how artefacts can focus and resource interaction. Planning and designing focal artefacts and deciding where, when and with whom to use them helped teachers to think about how they would capture and focus student attention on particular ideas and practices, how they might enhance the relevance of learning, introduce and develop new ideas and

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skills, and encourage collective thought and action. In sum, thinking about the focal artefacts they might use helped teachers to consider how they might give structure and provide support for learning and student agency within and across tasks and lessons. There was space in the plan to detail the possible interactions. Filling in these spaces helped teachers to think about the links they might make and the focus of interactionthe questions they might ask and what they might say when they introduced, and helped students work through, the various subtasks. Here they also planned the social configurations (individual, group, class) that would best enhance learning opportunities, and planned ways to facilitate students to share and discuss ideas. Finally, there was space where teachers could indicate their students potential responses. This section helped to focus them on what their students might do. The teachers thought through where their students might have difficulties and/or strengths and planned what they could do in response. As a technology example, part of Jennys teaching outline from 2006 is shown in Table 4.3. It details the first three of the nine meso technology teaching tasks she planned for her Year 4 and 5 class regarding the designing and making of percussion instruments. Only three are outlined, as they are indicative of the whole plan. Jennys teaching outline shows the links she made between focal artefacts, planned interactions, key outcomes and tasks. This linking indicates that Jenny considered how she was going to go about teaching her students so they could learn the key ideas and practices she had planned. For example, she planned for the students to examine real percussion instruments to discern their salient features before designing their own in meso task 3. This instrument analysis would help her students develop pertinent knowledge about percussion instruments that they could then utilise in their own designs. It ensured that all the students would have a shared experience to develop common knowledge and they would learn about and use specialist vocabulary in context. As a science example Table 4.4 shows the second layer of Lois science plan for the fossils unit she developed for her Year 1 to 4 students. It details just three of the five meso science tasks she planned. These three are indicative of all the tasks she planned. Lois teaching outline shows how she unpacked the main idea in the fossils unit into meso and micro tasks associated with different understandings about fossils. Lois is like Jenny in the technology planning discussed above, as she has also carefully thought about the ways she could teach ideas about fossils through her articulation and linking between focal artefacts, planned interactions, key responses and tasks. She expected that her students would learn the ideas through maintaining a focus on the main idea and through undertaking a series of linked experiences. For example, she has planned an examination of fossil pictures and of actual fossils. These activities were to help her students, develop through reasonably direct experience concepts about fossil characteristics as being once living or part of a living thing. Note that the vocabulary Lois used in her plan to describe the concepts is at an appropriate level for her young students. This indicates that she knows how to transform her adult understanding of science concepts into forms that are learnable for her students. Her detailing of key student responses shows she has thought through what will constitute evidence of student learning.
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Table 4.3. Jennys technology teaching outline plan Teaching tasks Micro 1.1 How do instruments make sound? 1.2 Why are instruments used? PeopleDJ, Musician. CD playerCDs. Discussion and sharing of favourite music. Range of instruments. Pictures. Brainstorming Share prior knowledge. Focal artefacts Planned interactions Key responses Confirm knowledge about sound. Know that instruments play a role in society through entertainment/ work. Know that specific materials make different sounds.

Macro

Meso

1. Introduce what musical instruments are.

2. Investigate different materials used to make musical instruments.

2.1 Compare different materials and how they make sound.

String instruments. Metal instruments. Shakers. Recording sheet. An instrument. Comparison sheet.

Groups with one instrument. Record sounds and share with class. Partner discussion and share back with class.

Task: To plan, design and construct a musical instrument from materials used on the farm.

3. Identify the features of a musical instrument.

2.2 Compare the same instruments made from different materials. 3.1 Examine, compare and label features of selected instruments. Worksheet Features Similarities How they are used Instrument pictures

Share and justify choices. Why does that feature help the instrument to make noise?

Know what features are needed in order for their instrument to make noise.

STRENGTHENING TEACHER PLANNING AND PREPARATION

39

To investigate how fossils provide clues to the past.

40

Table 4.4. Lois science teaching outline plan Micro tasks Fossils Mind mapping sheet Group investigation of fossils. Brainstorming groups. Class discussion bringing group brainstorm together. Can explore and tell what they already know about fossils. Focal artefacts Planned interactions Key student responses

CHAPTER 4

Main idea

Meso tasks

Day 1: Explore understandings of fossils.

Day 2: Investigate what fossils are and that they were once living things. Day 3: Investigate how fossils are formed. Rotting leaves Fossilised leaf Fossilised shell Pg 11.

Pictures Fossils

What was this fossil? Where do you think it was found? Discuss and make predictions and compare rotting leaves and fossilised leaves. How did the shell fossil become like this?

Can describe characteristics of a fossilonce living, part of/is a living thing.

1.1 Focusing Activityshow a fossil and give time for investigation. 1.2 Generate brainstorm where could it have come from? What is it called? What would you like to find out about this? 1.3 Share group brainstorming and collate as class. 2.1 What are fossils and where are they found? Pg 9. 2.2 Gather ideas about what all fossils have in common. 3.1 Looking at leaf fossils. Pg 10. 3.2 Look at a shell fossil sand tube with heavy toy at bottom, gradually cover with sandrepresent layering of fossil. 3.3 Making fossils Pg 11.

Show they understand that: fossils only form under very defined circumstances. for something to become a fossil it has to be a long way down under the ground.

STRENGTHENING TEACHER PLANNING AND PREPARATION

What was the Benefit of Careful Planning? Planning in this nested and interrelated manner was like peeling an onion and progressively revealing a finer grained layer as each piece was stripped off. Establishing the overall or macro learning task/idea was essential. So too was unpacking this to expose its multiple aspects and dimensions. When our teachers fleshed out the first part of the planner, they had to keep the main task/idea in mind to make sure that the overall dimensions of technological practice, or overarching science learning outcomes, and the specific learning intentions were coherent, connected and consistent. The second layer directed specific attention to the teaching tasks that would help students develop the intended knowledge and expertise. The detail required in the second layer of planning helped our teachers anticipate possibilities and undertake a dress rehearsal/dry run before classroom teaching. When teachers were completing this layer they used an iterative process where they moved between defining the meso and micro tasks, the focal artefacts, the planned interactions and the key outcomes. As they planned each aspect, they thought about the possible impact on their students and adjusted their pedagogical approaches accordingly. They also continually referred to the first layer to ensure that they were making pedagogical links to their learning intentions to ensure strong connections between the learning aimed for and the ways to help students get there. The macro task, or main idea, was included on both layers to provide a visual anchor linking the two layers and to help our teachers keep focused on the overall direction for learning. The use of planning tools specific to the subjects of science and technology helped develop our InSiTE teachers PCK. Why did planning with subjectspecific frameworks have such an impact? There were several reasons: Teachers had to decide the specific science and technology ideas and practices they wished to focus on; Teachers had to think about how to make science and technology ideas accessible to their students; Teachers had to detail how they intended to organise, adapt and represent science and technology ideas for teaching and learning within a set of sequenced and nested tasks; Teachers had to think about and choose the particular explanations and questions, artefacts, representations, illustrations, models, examples, analogies and demonstrations that they thought would help their students engage in and learn the particular ideas they intended them to learn.
THE PLANNING FRAMEWORK AS A MEDIATIONAL TOOL IN OUR COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

The planning framework served as a tool for more than individual teacher planning. It development and use was important in the team becoming a community of practice that blended the interests, knowledge and goals of researchers and teachers. The planning framework structure was important in developing teacher PCKlabelled

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spaces set up a demand for filling and hence for thinking about particular aspects of teaching, learning and assessing. Conversations were essential for helping to tease out the learning outcomes and the associated pedagogies in the unit the teachers planned to next teach. As a team we talked about what worked or did not work. It was in these preparatory discussions that teachers used each other, and us, as sounding boards about the effectiveness of the ideas they were planning for their next teaching. Some used the planning from another teacher as a launching pad for their own planning. They took note of any changes the other teacher considered necessary. For example, Tayla used Jennys technology plan for making musical instruments as a basis for planning her own musical instrument unit. However, because Jenny indicated that the unit might have been more successful if her students had understood how musical instruments could be modified to produce different sounds, Tayla changed her planning to focus more intensively on developing students ideas about sound before they embarked on designing their musical instruments. Also Taylas students were older than Jennys, so she altered Jennys unit to include a greater range of instruments. Jenny planned for her students to develop either an idiophone or a membranophone. In contrast Taylas students were to develop idiophones, membranophones, electrophones, chordophones and aerophones. In another example, Lois planned a technology unit for her Year 1 to 4 students where they developed a kite. Jane wanted her Year 1 students to undertake the same task. A minor but significant change came about because of teacher/researcher discussion. When Lois was teaching the unit her students had considerable difficulty with the technical skill of cutting the material for the sail of the kite. We talked about the need for students to cut: was this a skill that needed to be a student learning focus in the context of the whole unit? We concluded that it was not, that other learning outcomes were more important. Therefore, Jane changed the unit by preparing the sail material beforehand, thus eliminating the timeconsuming task of cutting. In both of these examples, the teachers developed their knowledge about specific aspects of teaching through discussion with trusted others. Talking about what did/did not work in classrooms was a source for developing teacher knowledge for teaching science and technology in a considered manner. Teachers commented: Planning together meant our units were more thought through, so therefore it was better for the students. (Jenny) The time to plan at the workshops, and having everyone at the meetings as resource people, were great. (Brenda) In our meetings we took the time to discuss PCK as a theoretical ideathe know why of it. We thought that discussing PCK would be a worthwhile way for teachers to think about their own knowledge development and teaching. Towards the end of the project all the teachers commented on the importance of PCK to them. For example: It is the essential stuff that helps us teach. If you have a good understanding you can help someone else get a good understanding. You can help them make connections much more than if you dont have PCK. (Tayla)

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STRENGTHENING TEACHER PLANNING AND PREPARATION

PCK is the knowledge that I bring to the task, lesson and/or content of what I am doing. It can be information, ideas and skills. Its marrying those up and being able to help students develop their own knowledge and skills. It is about me using my knowledge to help students learn. (Carol) PCK is what a teacher needs to know to effectively teach a unit. I have to understand the ideas and how to teach these. (Gail) The teachers came to understand that PCK was about them knowing the ideas and concepts so that they could teach them to their students. They emphasised that coming to know the ideas for teaching was an important step in the teaching process. As Jane and Tayla commented: I have to be able to grasp the concepts and learn about what I want to teach before I teach them to my children. (Jane) I have to find out to get a better understanding of the science concepts for teaching. Then I can help students in class understand the concepts. (Tayla) Teachers commented that their teaching was more purposeful when their planning was focussed on specific science and technology ideas and practices. They deliberately chose activities to develop student understanding and skills. They were careful to locate and define tasks within students prior knowledge and experiences as they saw them. Planning this way helped engage and maintain student focus and interest: I aim to keep my planning thorough and really get into the terminology and ensure the children are learning the best correct explanation or method for things that suit their learning needs. (Brenda) Because teachers were clear about the science and technology ideas they aimed to teach, they became more certain and confident that they could tease out relevant science and technology ideas with their students: I knew what I wanted the students to learn and was able to focus the discussion around the growth and reproduction of moulds. (Tayla) Some ideas and concepts need to be deliberately taught, or brought to childrens attention. You need to know what you want your children to know. Yes, it made me clarify what exactly were the technology ideas, so that I was able to help the children. (Lois) The use of the planner structured and supported collaborative discussion and analysis of what might be required to teach and learn a particular science idea and a particular technology task. The teachers were very positive about working with the planners and commented on their usefulness for developing their knowledge: It has helped with developing personal insight into the steps I need to take to teach science and technology. (Jane)

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It focused me on the learning outcomes, helped me clarify my understandings of the topic, and put it into suitable childspeak. (Brenda) The teachers considered that using the planners over time helped them to become more adept about knowing the direction they would take and some of the conversations they might have with their students. My indepth planning in technology produced the best teaching Ive done all year. If I went into that depth for everything, my teaching would be better. It helps me know where were going, what to do and what questions to ask. (Jenny) As the teachers filled out the planner, they rehearsed and revised selected tasks they planned for their students. They considered that their rehearsal of tasks before teaching enabled them to explore the knowledge, understandings and skills most salient to the tasks, to assess the appropriateness of the tasks for their students and to foreshadow potential problems. Through this preparatory process the teachers became more aware of the demands of the tasks, both conceptually and technically: It was good that I tried out how to make cheese at home before I had the children try this. I found how long it would take and I thought about easier ways they could do it. (Brenda) It was important I made a crosshalving joint at home. It meant I adapted the technique to suit the children; I sized the wood into pieces they could manage and thought about the instructions I would give them so they could understand what to do. (Grant) Teachers talked about having more confidence in their AfL interactions because they were well planned. Their confidence they had the requisite knowledge proved crucial to teachers being willing to engage in effective classroom interactions with students and responding constructively to students growing understandings. My questions got them to think about things, their ideas, so they could change them on the way. They could improve while they were going. (Tayla) Previously I would have thought that just getting an answer from them was okay. Now I challenge them in their actual understanding. (Jenny) In our meetings we also examined and analysed portfolios of student work produced in our teachers science and technology classrooms. Opportunities for teachers to share and develop their understanding of assessment procedures enabled them to review their teaching practices, their view of students learning and their understanding of subject goals. Like others we found that discussion of student work over time and across, as well as within, schools was of benefit (Gipps & Clarke, 1998; Harlen, 2005; Kimbell & Stables, 2008; Valencia & Au, 1997). Sharing portfolios of student work helped our InSiTE teachers better appreciate the scope of students capability and draw comparisons between different levels of learning. When they scrutinised

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STRENGTHENING TEACHER PLANNING AND PREPARATION

and discussed student work from other classrooms, they thought of their own students and compared how the work related to them. They made comparisons between the different groupings of students, projecting possibilities for where their students might go, as well as reflecting on what they may have accomplished as younger students. Their examination of student work helped our teachers imagine possible before and after learning accomplishments for their students. Class portfolios of student work helped the teachers see studentlearning progression. Student work became a site and a tool for meaningmaking conversations. Working collaboratively and discussing portfolio artefacts encouraged teachers to reexamine their own knowledge, assumptions, and conceptions about teaching and assessment practice in science and technology (Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1. Discussing portfolios of student work.

As our teachers professional knowledge and experience developed they asked more probing questions, learned new strategies, and supported each other to try new ideas. Teachers of younger students gained a deeper understanding of where their students might go next. Teachers of older students developed an appreciation of what younger students were able to accomplish. In one school, a selection of Year 1 to 6 science and technology portfolios demonstrating a range of learning accomplishments were retained in a central place. These served as a point of reference for individual teachers, for syndicates and over the whole school.
THE PLANNING FRAMEWORK AS A MEDIATIONAL TOOL IN CLASSROOM PRACTICE

Over the three years of the project the teachers planning showed a shift from a focus on very broad achievement objectives to a focus on more specific scientific or technological knowledge and skills appropriate for their students. So what did they make of planning in this way? Did it impact on their classroom practice? The teachers commented on the benefits of planning for interactions before teaching, especially thinking about and being prepared for the sorts of responses their students might

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make. Such preparation and forethought meant that they could optimise learning within their AfL interactions with students. When they were preparing to teach they thought through the language they might use and the questions they might ask: It made me think through the correct terminology to use, that I then expected the children to use. (Carol) It was helpful to think about what to ask for each time. I knew where to go and I had thought about how my students might respond. (Tayla) At times the InSiTE teachers were taken aback at the development in their students understandings, skills and attitudes: I was amazed. At first the students had no idea about the parts or reproduction of moulds. At the end every student had a clear understanding and could talk and represent their ideas. (Tayla) Overall the unit was a success. For the children this was their first introduction to food technology. All the children have learnt about prototypes and production lines and they know how to formulate their own prototypes and production lines. (Lois) In classrooms we observed how the teachers used their plans as a tool to prompt their memory while they were teaching. They often had their plan beside them to guide their teaching and for easy reference: I used the plan throughout the unit. It ensured I didnt miss any important teaching points or stages and I felt comfortable knowing that I could refer to it for confirmation of terms and procedures. (Brenda) I often had the plan beside me when I was teaching. I used it a lot. It clearly marked where I wanted to take the children with their learning and what I would need to do to get them there. (Lois) Although the teachers reported the benefit of using their plans as a memory prompt this did not restrict what they did in classrooms. They were able to analyse and interpret what was happening with student learning, and respond accordingly. Teachers thoughtfully modified and refined tasks and activities to account for the ways students were engaging. They also abandoned planned tasks if they became too problematic for their students and/or were not needed. For example, Tayla left out a planned interactive whiteboard product survey of musical instruments. She deemed her students had gained sufficient knowledge from a product analysis of real instruments. The teachers were very open to changes in light of the progress their students were making: With this planning I feel quite prepared, but I changed direction to suit [the] childrens needs and I might then present ideas differently than planned to establish learning. (Jane)

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STRENGTHENING TEACHER PLANNING AND PREPARATION

Having clear learning pathways helped me to predict possible pitfalls. But other incidental teaching occurs once you step into the classroom. (Gail) Though our teachers shared ideas and helped each other to prepare for their teaching, they did not completely foresee, at the planning stage, all the skills and knowledge required by students to accomplish a task. Once they were teaching in their classrooms they needed to respond on the fly to developing situations. In the milieu of a classroom, teachers required the good sense to choose what was worth pursuing. We found that their extensive and detailed planning did not restrict their classroom teaching to only that planning; rather their onthespot decisions and actions, their decisions during and between lessons and days, were based on their complex understanding of a breadth of learning possibilities as anchored to their longerterm goals. Considerable skill and knowledge are required for planning in this detailed way and teachers require time and support to understand how to use it to benefit student learning. Despite this limitation our teachers believed that the benefits outweighed any negatives: It is time consuming to think it all through, but I like working with it when its done. It really helps me remain focussed on what I should be doing. It helps me make connections for students and the students for themselves. (Tayla) Several teachers found the planner so worthwhile that they introduced them to colleagues in their schools. I think it [planner] is very worthwhile so I have introduced it to two teachers in my team and they are using it for their teaching of science. (Carol) They commented on how their colleagues also found the twolayered planner useful, as it helped them home in on the specific subject ideas and skills they wanted their students to learn: Ive used the planner as scaffolds with my team. They helped them to understand the ideas in their science teaching. Before they wanted to only plan activities. I used the same process as you did and the teachers changed in their planning from focusing only on the activity to focusing on the science ideas, such as germination in plants. (Tayla) Teachers responses alerted us to the degree to which the affordances of an artefact are grounded in the history of its development. We are well aware of the dangers of including teacher planning in this bookit is always possible to critique it in terms of the orientation it suggests (teacher or student led/behaviourist or constructivist); as lacking in sufficient detail (more specification of teacher questions is required, more detailing of potential student alternative conceptions and possible teacher responses, more careful scheduling of time for students to think, and so on); and as showing inadequate understanding and representation of a domain. In addition, we realise that there are different country cultural norms for what constitutes a quality unit and lesson plan and that language is used in different ways in different contexts.

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We assume that all these critiques and issues apply to the plans we have included, but we hope readers will remember that these plans are the residue of our individual and collective talk and thinking as teachers and researchers. They were interactive accomplishments, and they include only the detail that was considered necessary by the teacher as a reminder or activator of this collective thinking. One thing we learned from this process was how rarely teachers have, or take, the time to plan in detail and also how they value the opportunity to do this and to share and debate ideas.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS

Planning and preparation, including task design, are important in AfL. The InSiTE project highlighted the importance of working with primary teachers to identify, articulate and build their science and technology PCK. Teachers translated their own content knowledge into forms and tasks so their students could learn. The use of a twolayered planner identifying the key features of each subject supported this process. The planner, like other artefacts, provided a scenario and resource for individual and collective reflection, analysis and interaction (Roth, et. al., 1999). The planner focused our teachers on analysing their own and their students understandings and was pivotal in helping our teachers bring to mind, refine and develop the knowledge they needed for effective interactions with students. The planner also became a tool for collaborative talk that supported the articulation and development of PCK by the InSiTE teachers and researchers. By preparing appropriate materials, and setting tasks with clear objectives in meaningful contexts, our teachers were able to respond flexibly to their students developing ideas, interests and skills. The repeated use, and refinement, of the science and technology planners over the three years helped our teachers translate their science and technology content knowledge into forms that were learnable for their students, helped them to formulate science and technology specific teaching approaches and tasks, and enabled them to anticipate and respond to student learning. Teacher knowledge was further developed when they used their plans in their classrooms, for it was then that they used their PCK in action, especially in their AfL interactions with students. Their science and technology PCK was refined again when they compared what occurred in the classroom with what they had anticipated when they planned. The subjectspecific planner also mediated ongoing thinking and discussions between teachers and researchers about the nature of PCK. Effective AfL interactions are shaped and underpinned by teacher knowledge. Teachers used their plans and developing PCK to help them make decisions in real time and across contexts. However, teacher planning shaped and framed, but did not predetermine what happened in their classrooms. Planning for specific subject learning outcomes was helpful in informing teacher probing of student thinking and subsequently bringing to mind the strategies our teachers might use to respond to and extend individual learning in the moment. Having clear specific learning intentions meant that teachers could think in terms of a horizon of possibilities

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STRENGTHENING TEACHER PLANNING AND PREPARATION

(Swaffield, 2008, p. 66), rather than predetermined fixed points. Teachers reported they were more certain they could tease out relevant concepts and principles when interacting with students. By concentrating on the planning process, we developed our primary teachers science and technology knowledge and associated AfL practices. Planning with the frameworks helped our teachers to think ahead. They agreed that when they were in action in the classroom they were well prepared. Yet they were still responding in the moment to what their students were saying and doing. Our teachers were emphatic that the detailed InSiTE planning did not lead to the constraint of student learning possibilities or teaching to the letter in a regimented manner. Rather, it assisted their attendance to the spirit of AfL and afforded opportunities to respond flexibly to student ideas, interests and skills. In thinking about wider implications, our working with two disciplines alerted us to the fundamental influence of the nature of each discipline on teacher AfL practices. As mentioned earlier we are not of the view that AfL can be conceptualised or practised as only a generic activity. In technology the anchor for developing plans and guiding learning is the identification of a main technological task as a design problem to be addressed. In science the anchor for developing plans and guiding learning is the identification of the overarching science idea to be constructed and exemplified. Both science and technology have underpinning practices to be learned. While similar AfL strategies can be deployed to make student ideas and attitudes visible, teacher feedback on these requires a deep and flexible understanding of disciplinary content and practicesteachers need to understand disciplinary concepts and constructs and how these are generated and validated. In this chapter we have described how a planning framework used in a community of teachers and researchers shaped and developed teacher knowledge about teaching science and technology. In Chapter 5 we begin our focus on how this planning played out in our teachers classrooms.

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CHAPTER 5

ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING INTERACTIONS AS MULTIMODAL

In Chapter 4 we unpacked the planning the InSiTE teachers devised to prepare for teaching and assessing. In this chapter we turn to how this planning and preparation played out in science and technology classrooms. What was interesting for us was that the planning and preparation our teachers undertook did not prescribe exactly what then happened in their classrooms. The course of their teaching was accomplished through interactions: interactions shaped the task at hand just as the task shaped the talk and action (Wertsch, 1998). Teachers generation of information on student ideas, along with any feedback and scaffolding they provided, was embedded in and occurred through interaction. In this chapter and in Chapters 6 and 7, we examine different aspects of the interactions we observed in the InSiTE classrooms and discuss how each aspect contributed to student, and teacher, participation in AfL. While Chapter 6 addresses the role of material artefacts, and Chapter 7 elaborates on the temporal aspects of AfL as part of classroom life, this chapter focuses on our argument that AfL interactions need to be cognisant of more than merely talk. It is our contention that AfL interactions are multimodal and that for AfL interactions to be optimally engaging and responsive, they need to be planned for and engaged in as such.
MOVING INTO THE MULTIMODAL CLASSROOM

In looking back over classroombased research it is clear that talk and, to a lesser extent, writing has been a main focus. This is not surprising as talk and dialogue are central to learning (Alexander, 2000; Lemke, 1990; Mercer, 1995; Roth, 2005; Wells, 1999). They are also central to AfL (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall & Wiliam, 2003a, 2003b; Duschl & Gitomer, 1997; RuizPrimo, 2011). Yet there is clear evidence that other modes and media have a role to play in both learning and its assessment. The use of gesture, gaze, demonstrative action and space are integral to everyday interaction but until comparatively recently the role they play in making meaning has been downplayed in classroom studies. We suspect that the contribution other modes of expression play to meaning making has been overlooked because of their everydayness. Yet we propose that it is this very everydayness that has the potential to make them a valuable resource in classrooms, particularly when, as is the case in most contemporary classrooms, students come from a diversity of backgrounds (AltonLee, 2003). We therefore turned to the theory of multimodality (Jewitt, 2003, 2008) to help describe and make sense of the complexity of AfL as a situated interactional process

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that involved the personplus, both as we observed the interactions, and as our InSiTE teachers discussed them. The fundamental assumption of a multimodal perspective is that communication and meaning making involves more than talk: meanings are made (as well as distributed, interpreted, and remade) through situated configurations across image, gesture, gaze, body posture, sound, writing, music, speech, and so on. (Jewitt, 2008, p. 246) Gunther Kress and his colleagues (Kress, Jewitt, Ogborn & Tsatsarelius, 2001) have been influential in demonstrating the value of a multimodal approach in teaching and learning science. In their study a science teacher successfully used a combination of gestures, drawings, a threedimensional model and images to explain and illustrate the circulation of blood. Visual and material resources were either prominently in the foreground, or less noticeably in the background as the teacher worked to scaffold students towards a more scientific understanding of the circulation of blood; at times the teachers speech was independently coherent and at times meaning was constituted through an interplay of modes. As well as being important for teaching, their study illustrated that the use of a combination of modes of communication can support students to express the kinds of meaning that would be difficult if not impossible for them to express verbally (see also Roth & Lawless, 2002). Carey Jewitt (2003) sums up this idea thus: Different modes demand different intellectual work from pupils and this work fills up the concepts to be learned in different ways (p. 84). Studies of scienceinthemaking by Gregory Kelly, Teresa Crawford and colleagues lend weight to the need for careful attention to the full range of means students deploy to make and express meaning (Crawford, Saul, Mathews & Makinster, 2005; Kelly & Chen, 1999; Kelly, Chen & Crawford, 1998). In one example from this body of work, Gregory Kelly and Candice Brown (2003) illustrate the value to students of multiple and multimodal opportunities to make ideas public, visible, and discussible (p. 256) to different audiences. Over the course of a unit students designed and constructed a solar energy device and Kelly and Brown demonstrate that what a student was able to express through formal and written tasks would have provided an impoverished view of the scope of his learning. Joshua Danish and David Phelps (Danish & Phelps, 2011) and Maria Varelas and colleagues (Varelas, Pappas, Kane & Arsenault, 2010) have demonstrated the value of young children making a physical model and drama, respectively. We can see therefore that the notion of multimodality has implications for what is conceptualised as a demonstration of knowledge/knowing and what comes to be counted as valued learning. The findings of scholars working with an explicit focus on developing students representational skills in science indicate the need for careful attention to the full range of representational tools and modes that are used in science and technology (see for example Prain, Tytler & Peterson, 2009; Prain & Waldrip, 2006). As Jay Lemke (2000a) reminds us: What it means to be able to use a scientific concept, and therefore to understand it in the way that a scientist does, is to be able to fluently juggle with its verbal, mathematical, and visualgraphical aspects, applying

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whichever is most appropriate in the moment and freely translating back and forth among them (p. 248). When children begin to make sense of science ideas, they do so through interactions with multiple forms of representation. Be it speech, written language, graphical notations, or gesture, the centrality of representation in science is undeniable (Tytler, 2007). In technology Richard Kimbell and Kay Stables (2008) amongst others (see for example Archer & Roberts, 2002; Atkinson, 2007) point to the power of modelling for idea development. In their Assessment of Performance Unit Design and Technology project they sought to illustrate how ideas conceived in the minds eye need to be expressed in concrete form before they can be examined in full (p. 220). They view modelling as the progressive representation of ideas and that teachers see modelling as a means for learners to think through their ideas. Kimbell and Stables detail several kinds of modelling: visual (through sketches); written (through annotation); verbal (through discussion); numeric (through calculations); and, material (developing 3D representations). All kinds can contribute to the evolution of a resolution, whether the purpose is future oriented, for talking to oneself, or for reflecting on how things might behave if organised in this way. It is through multiple forms of representations that students are able to transform the images in their minds eye into various externalisations that demonstrate and communicate the ideas. We see that the notion of modelling as a multimodal practice has implications for what is seen to be valuable in technology learning. Students understanding and management of the interplay of different visual, verbal and spatial modes is challenging and its development cannot be left to chance (Jayashree, 2009). Prior experience with a representational means and mode influences the affordances someone perceives that it has for the task at hand. This leads to an important role for the teacher in monitoring and helping students to understand and gain expertise in verbal aspects as well as other modes and specialised means of representations (Kelly & Brown, 2003). In our work for example, it was just as important for teachers to instruct students in how technologists draw designs, as it was to introduce the language technologists use. Carey Jewitt (2003) has pointed out that if learning is a multimodal activity then assessment needs to be as well. A case study by Denise Newfield, David Andrew, Pippa Stein and Robert Maungedzo (2003) provides one of the most compelling illustrations we have read on this point. They worked with students in a classroom in Johannesburg to create praise poems (izibongoa widely used genre of Southern Africa poetry) that were embodied in embroidered and collaged cloths. Their study illustrates that a teacher providing a variety of and novel modes for representation can facilitate student agency and is tolerant of difference. Barbara OByrne (2009) and Bronwen Cowie and Kathrin OtrelCass (2011) illustrate the value of providing young students with multiple modes and opportunities to demonstrate what they knew and were learning about wolves and tuatara, respectively. Taken together what these studies show is that, in the words of Jay Lemke (1998), different modes used in combination can multiply meaning. It is this multiplicative

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rather than the additive contribution that is our main focus in this chapter. To ground and give meaning to this potential, we present two extended examples of classroom interaction as telling examples (Mitchell, 1984). Through these two examples we illustrate how the teachers and their students used talk in conjunction with written text, visual materials, gestures, demonstrative actions and the manipulation and production of artefacts to express what they knew and could do and to construct/ coconstruct feedback on what might come next. We also present two shorter examples to flesh out other aspects of the multimodality of different aspects of the AfL process. In including these examples our intention is to give life to what takes place in New Zealand primary classrooms so that readers will gain some understanding of the complex interplay between teachers and students within an AfL agenda. Extended Example 1: Its a Kiwi In this, the first telling example, we enter Lois New Entrant to Year 4 classroom at the beginning of the first lesson of a science unit on kiwi, its features and how these might relate to its endangered state. We selected this example as telling because of the active involvement of the students and the productive interplay that emerged between the modes and media students employed within the tasks Lois had designed. We also selected it because it illustrates the way Lois feedback was designed towards helping her students achieve her learning goals related to kiwi. The InSiTE teachers usually began a unit with a task that aimed to stimulate student interest and cue student prior knowledge and experience. Lois did just this by beginning with her students gathered in front of a freestanding easel where she had displayed a covered photograph. She had segmented and numbered the covering to guide the removal process, in a way that would focus student attention on key features of the kiwi. Lois had also considered how to gain and sustain student attentionshe knew she should not reveal the beak too early as this would preempt discussion. This planned task was also to help her find out what her students already knew as a class. Lois progressively peeled off the segments to reveal a photograph of a kiwi. As she did so, she encouraged the students to conjecture about what was being revealed. A partial sequence of the progressive disclosure is shown below in Figures 5.1 to 5.5. For the second and third photographs (5.2 and 5.3), the students speculated that what was being revealed was a cat cos [sic] they sleep curled up, and a rabbit or a nest because of the shape and brown colour. Support for the conclusion the photograph was of a kiwi increased when the big, floppy and sharp feet were revealed (Figure 5.4). A class chorus of Its a kiwi confirmed this conclusion when the ninth piece was removed to reveal the long beak. In thinking about the disclosure task we can see that Lois orchestrated the progressive disclosure of the photograph to build anticipation, to capture the whole classs attention and to focus students on the physical features of the kiwi: its overall shape, feet, colour, feathers and beak. Attention to detail is an important aspect in developing students scientific observation skills, as it is the basis of scientific habits of attention (Eberbach & Crowley, 2009). In this case, as Lois had intended, the students

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Figures 5.1 to 5.5. Progressive disclosure of kiwi.

observational skills were engaged by the need to solve the puzzle of what was depicted. As Lois removed the jigsawlike pieces, the students pointed to aspects of the photograph and talked quietly in pairs/threes, all the while moving gradually closer to the photograph. In this way, the photograph provided a shared interactional space to which participants [the class in this case] were oriented perceptually, discursively, and physically (body orientation) (Roth, 1994, p. 184). Ideas were suggested, explained, discarded and further developed as each additional piece of visual information allowed for the refinement of possibilities. During this task it was crucial that Lois had displayed the kiwi photograph so that every student could easily see what she was revealing. In assessment terms this activity enabled Lois to confirm that all her students could identify a kiwi. She also learned something of the vocabulary they had for talking about physical features and the links they were able to make with other animals. Lois then moved to the next planned task where she told the students she was interested to find out what they knew about kiwi. She assigned the students to groups of four to brainstorm the characteristics of kiwi. For each group she nominated a leader. This person was the most experienced writer of the four. She gave each group a large sheet of blank paper and a marker pen. The groups moved to small tables. Mary Jane (7 years), as the teachernominated group leader, orchestrated her groups response to the task by asking each group member a leading question and recording their response. Her questions indicated she knew that kiwi are shy, nocturnal, native to New Zealand, and eat grubs. Kyla (6 years), as group leader, told her group members they would each have a turn and write your own idea. Olivia said: My idea is kiwis have two eyes and then wrote this on the chart. Next, Sophie (7 years), in response to a directive from Kyla, stated: Im going to write kiwis only live on land and are special to New Zealand. In both cases, the group written charts provided a written record, albeit partial, of what a group had accomplished through talk. During this task Lois moved among the groups talking with the students about the ideas on their charts. She asked questions to help generate ideas when groups were stuck. For example, do you know what kiwi might eat? and I wonder why they have such a long bill? In looking back over this brainstorm, we can see that like the disclosure task, it required the students to differentiate and distinguish the characteristics of a kiwi.

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Within the group each student needed to be able to communicate ideas in words, and without the help of a visual referent. And at least one member of the group needed to be able to record ideas in writing. In Lois classroom it was accepted that an older student, or Lois, would write for a younger student if they required helphow to form letters and spell words was never an issue. What was interesting in this brainstorm activity was the way the older students replicated Lois questioning techniques to guide the younger students to think about and develop a phrase/sentence to explain what they knew. In this way, peers acted as resources for each other in the clarification and representation of ideas. The group task was accomplished without fuss and with all students knowing what they had to dothe task goal was clear: to write down what they knew about kiwi. Lois next called the class together for a sharing session. The students sat in their groups in a circle on the floor with their brainstorm charts in front of them. Lois nominated group representatives to share an idea, which she recorded on a flip chart. During this process the students looked at each others group charts and listened to the shared ideas. They monitored the publicly displayed ideas against those on their own chart. Group members made sure their group contributed a new idea, indicating they were listening actively and understood the points already made. The class list of ideas was later displayed on the wall. This whole class sharing session moved class thinking forward by providing a forum for the pooling of group ideas. It was significant that Lois recorded the students ideas to produce a joint public record of what the class viewed as the distinctive features of kiwi. The sharing and recording process alerted Lois to the breadth of student knowledge and interest in kiwi as a unique New Zealand bird, with particular characteristics, behaviour, habitat, and food preferences. The ease with which the nonrepetition of ideas proceeded indicated that the norm of contributing different ideas, rather than the same, was well established. The nonrepetition of ideas suggested that individual students were able to assess their own ideas against those that had been made public and to extend their knowledge of kiwi by listening to the other groups. The public display of the class list of ideas provided an enduring record and one that students could access at any time. The final task planned in this first lesson was for each student to draw a kiwi. As Lois introduced the drawing activity, she repositioned the kiwi photograph, now uncovered, on the easel in front of the class. She outlined the learning intentions: the students were to draw a kiwi so that its shape, feet, beak and, particularly, its colour were realistic (she knew her girls liked pink and there was a high likelihood they might draw pink kiwis). She gestured to the salient features of the kiwi in the photograph as she made these points, which encouraged the students to make a further examination of the photo. She then gave each student a piece of A4 paper. The students moved to their group tables and drew their picture of kiwi using the coloured pencils and crayons permanently set out on their tables. All students completed a drawing (Figures 5.6 to 5.11). Lois moved around the class, asking individual students about their drawing.

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Figures 5.6 to 5.11. Kiwi drawings.

Most of the drawings, as can be seen from the examples, were of a side view. This matched the photograph. Many drawings included some aspects of the setting where a kiwi might be seen. Two drawings are of a top view. Jason (Figure 5.6) told Lois: My kiwi is eating grubs. He had also drawn a small wing folded out to show that kiwi have small wings. Only John (5.10) drew a kiwi at night. He told Lois: Kiwi forage at night rather than during the day. Meg (5.9) and MaryJane (5.11) used shading to show feathers. All the completed drawings were displayed on the class wall. What is also of note is that the students drawings included some of the iconic or defining characteristics of kiwiround brown bodies, long bills and small, or no, wings. In contrast to the disclosure, brainstorm and pooling tasks, drawing a realistic picture of a kiwi required each student to synthesise what they already knew about kiwi and what they had learned from the previous tasks. In addition, students needed to consider the overall shape of the kiwi and the spatial relations of its physical features, all in relation to the size of the paper Lois gave them. Drawing was an important mode of communication in Lois classroom and she was aware of the thinking and skill demands of the task. It was important that Lois talked to the students about their drawings while they were drawing. It was through these interactions that she was able to help the students keep the task goal in mind, find out about the ideas that underpinned their drawings and so better understand what they knew and were interested in. Talking with Lois about their drawings appeared to come naturally even for shy students and those who had just begun school, indicating that students were ready, willing and able to disclose their ideas. Students were at ease and trusted Lois with their thoughts. The wall display of these drawings provided students with a visual record of what they had accomplished and provided a further source of information about kiwi that students could access at their leisure. Whole Lesson Comment The variety and sequencing of tasks, and the way Lois positively engaged all her students, engendered a sense of excitement and momentum. Lois guided the students using multiple modes, from a careful focus on the different physical features of kiwi,

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as depicted in the photograph, to consideration of the characteristics of kiwi as a species. There was a progression from a particular pictorial conception of kiwi and their characteristics to a general, and more abstract, conception. Lois orchestrated a productive interplay between individual, group and whole class generation, sharing and validation of ideas. The multimodal tasks Lois had planned were designed to help her students demonstrate in various ways what they knew about kiwi physical features. The final drawing task provided an opportunity to demonstrate their understandings in a nonlinguistic, representative manner. In conjunction with their drawing, they had also an opportunity to add more by explaining their drawing to Lois. This cumulative task sequence focused the student on the main idea of kiwi physical features. At the same time it provided Lois with a comprehensive picture of the prior knowledge, skills and interests students held. In subsequent lessons the students read nonfiction books as well as stories and legends about kiwi. They went on a field trip to a local kiwi sanctuary and conservation trial site. There the conservator spoke to the students about the range of animals that are kiwi predators. The conservator encouraged the students to examine stuffed examples of kiwi predators including a cat, stoat, weasel, rat and possum. She showed videos and explained how the predators determination had to be countered. They visited the trial site for the development of a pestproof fence where the conservator explained the trial process and the challenges presented by particular pests. The students then used the stuffed predators to roleplay thinking like a cat, rat, possum in an attempt to scale the fence, as shown in Figure 5.12. Next, the students walked through the sanctuary to experience a kiwi habitat. The conservator discussed where kiwi burrows might be found and she asked why kiwi might need a long bill to forage for food. Two students carefully checked out known kiwi burrows to see if they could feel any kiwi. Back in the classroom the class composed a story about their experience and learning. Representing their fieldtrip experience as text and pictures provided another opportunity for making and communicating meaning across multiple modes. The pages of this photographic book were hung high across the room in sequence and read as a class with Lois. The pages hung in the classroom for the duration of the unit and

Figure 5.12. Thinking like a possum.

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students could read them as an independent reading activity. Later they were stapled together into a big book. This was used in subsequent reading lessons as a shared big book. Finally the book became part of their classroom library for independent reading. The field trip to the sanctuary can be understood as a complex multimodal activity (Liberg, Geijerstam & Folkeryd, 2011). The students were fascinated by the preserved animals: their physical features and the links between their ability to scale or dig under a fence. They found the dramatisation activity compelling. It required them to make their thinking public in a way that built in feedback through audience response to their actions. Student comments indicated that prompting them to think through the challenges of protecting kiwi as flightless birds helped them make a direct and personal connection to the challenges conservators, and kiwis, face. The synergy of using dialogue alongside exploration in the real world in different types of modalities sustained interest and was a springboard for further elaboration of ideas. Being inside the sanctuary had a strong impact on Lois students. They were visibly excited when they searched for kiwi. The need to be hushed, so as not to frighten kiwi away, added to the sense of drama. This activity provided a forum for students to develop their ideas about the relationship between kiwi features and kiwi habitat. Back at school their reflection on the fieldtrip experience allowed them to use the new language and ideas they had learned. Their reflective writing captured some of the richness of their individual thinking. The photographic book served as a summary of their visit and was a repository of some of the new language they had been introduced to. As such it was an ongoing reference for learning. Lois next asked her students to do a further kiwi drawing. In introducing the drawing task, Lois emphasised that often when scientists draw, they do so in black and white and pay attention to detail. She asked that the students try to draw like a scientist, using only black pencil on white paper, and she also asked that they include all the special features of kiwi in their drawings. Lois moved around the class and talked with students while they were drawing. Xavier (5 years) drew his kiwi (Figure 5.13) with feathers, a long bill, two legs with claws and a round body shape, all correct anatomical features of kiwi. He explained that in his drawing he had been careful to show that the beak is down

Figure 5.13. Xaviers kiwi drawing.

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because it is finding a worm. They find their food with it and they dig in the ground. They eat worms, spiders, bugs and insects. They have eight claws altogethersee [points to feet]. They can fight off enemies by doing this [bobs head from side to side]. Xavier was not convinced that drawing like a scientist was preferable. He liked his first kiwi drawing better because it was colourful. Georgia (7 years) explained that in her drawing (Figure 5.14) she had tried to show both what kiwi looked like (note the marks for feathers) and what they ate. It was particularly important to talk with her about her drawing for the additional information she provided about kiwi. In her words: This is at night and its feeding. Kiwis are nocturnal so they come out at night. See the worms under the ground. Kiwis can smell 3 centimetres under the ground and they get worms out of the ground. They have nostrils at the end of their bill. They dig into the ground and get the worm up; then they put their head back, open up their bill and the worm goes down. They have four claws on their feet but you can only see three because one is at the bottom. Her last comment that kiwi have 4 claws but you can only see three in her drawing suggests she understood the configuration of kiwi feet and the limitations of drawing as a representational means. Georgia confided that she preferred her second drawing because it was like a scientists drawing.

Figure 5.14. Georgias kiwi drawing.

Once the drawings were completed and students had shared their efforts with the class, they were also placed on the wall display for show and examination. All students were able to complete this activity and meet the learning intentions for the task. They drew like scientists, including special kiwi features. They talked confidently about their drawing and what they knew about kiwi. The drawing and subsequent interactions provided students with opportunities to show what they had learned over the course of the unit. In contrast to their first kiwi drawing, no students drew kiwi out in daytime, indicating their gained knowledge. The use of only black

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pencil on white paper meant the students could draw kiwi features in a distinct fashion and in a careful manner. The public display of the students work was an affirmation of their efforts and they could make comparisons between these drawings and their first efforts. Lois concluded the unit with a true/false fact sort. She had prepared sets of facts about kiwi on individual cards; each card held one fact. Each pair of students was asked to sort kiwi facts into true or false. Each pair had a set of cards. The cards were large and of a size that allowed the two students to work together, access them easily, read out the statements, and place them in two piles. As they sorted the cards, the students gestured towards the cards and the piles. The following sequence was observed from Michael and Sophie. Michael, who held the statement cards, began by reading out: Kiwis can fly. Sophie: [Points and taps table] True here, eh? False here? Michael: OK. Thats false. [Puts Kiwis can fly on false side] Sophie: [Nods in agreement] [Michael and Sophie read out together: Kiwis are nocturnal.] Sophie: [Taps true side] Michael: Yep. They like the night. [Places statement on true side] [Michael reads out loud: Kiwis have long whiskers on the base of their bills and these help them feel in the dark.] Michael: I think true. [Places it on true side] Sophie: Me too. The students continued reading and placing cards. There was no teacher intervention. Lois was moving around the class but did not interact with the pairs. Mostly she looked over their shoulders at what they had accomplished. Once all pairs had finished their sort, Lois called them back to the mat. She then read out each statement in turn and the students answered true or false. When there was agreement Lois placed the card on the whiteboard easel under T or F. However, when there was disagreement Lois probed to help the students resolve any dilemma. For example she read out: Kiwis live up in branches and asked: Who thinks this? Michael answered: Yes. Lois then asked: What did we look in when we were looking for kiwi when we went on our visit? Sophie replied: A burrow. Michael responded: Oh, thats right. Lois asked again: So do kiwi live up in trees? All students including Michael replied: No. Sometimes she used evidence to help the students clarify or confirm ideas. For example, when she read, Kiwi have four claws, the class was fairly evenly split as to whether this was true or false. So Lois found a photograph depicting kiwi feet. She pointed at the claws on the feet and instructed: Look, count with me. One, two, three and a little one tucked up the back. So is it true or false? Students replied: True. Lois also added the final agreed set of true/false cards to the evolving wall display.

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Compared with the brainstorm in the first lesson of the unit, the cards circumscribed, at least partially, what was discussed in a manner consistent with Lois agenda to assess the students understanding of key ideas from across the unit (see also OByrne, 2009). By providing readymade statements on cards, Lois ensured the students focus was on the ideas, not writing. As the students read and reread the statements, they were prompted to use science terms such as nocturnal and bill, rather than beak. As they read, pointed to, talked about and moved the statement cards, their talk, gestures and the cards as material resources complemented each other and helped the students to elaborate on the meaning of each statement. The positioning of the cards provided a visual record of the students thinking and, ultimately, a representation of their consensus view of which statements were true and which were false. As Lois moved around the room, the students movement and placement of the cards provided her with an insight into the challenges different groups were facing. She noticed, for example, that Michael and Sophie had placed Kiwi live up in branches in true and nearly half the pairs had placed Kiwi have four claws in false. Once back on the mat the information Lois had gleaned on the fly allowed her to target particular concepts for class discussion as a means of providing feedback. Through this evidencechecking discussion, she was able to guide the students towards the accepted science ideas about kiwi. Students were able to selfassess their ideas and make adjustments accordingly. Lois placing the final agreed sort of true/false facts on the wall added to the already displayed information. This provided extra independent reading opportunities and made available a ready check of ideas about kiwi. Lois kiwi unit has special meaning for us as researchers. To us it evoked the spirit of AfL. The unit was one of the shortest we observed: it took place over five sessions. It was also one of the most dynamic in the sense of providing students with a range of complementary experiences focused around a big idea. It appeared to achieve what John Airey and Cedric Linder (2009) describe as a critical constellation of tasks necessary for a holistic understanding. What the students learned was not just content but ways of acting and thinking. Through the use of tasks that overlapped and reinforced each other, the students developed a rich base of common knowledge and shared practices for observing natural phenomena and for representing what they knew. The feedback was built in through the planned and spontaneous opportunities students had to express and test out their thinking. AfL was seamlessly integrated with teaching and learning. When we visited Lois class the next year, we observed that some of the students used the observation and analysis ideas and practices they had developed through the kiwi unit in their learning about fossils (Cowie, OtrelCass & Moreland, in 2012). This indicates that those students learning had been sustained over time. Extended Example 2: Making Percussion Instruments We enter Taylas Year 7 and 8 classroom at the beginning of a technology unit where the students were charged with the task of creating their own percussion instruments out of materials found on farms. But more than just a creation of instruments, these
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instruments were to be used by the students in an original class performance as part of a schools competition at the local agricultural field days. We have included this example as telling because of the way the teacher and students worked together towards their solutions and also because it illustrates the value of articulating ideas inprogress using a combination of modes (oral, written, diagrams and drawings, constructions). Over the course of the first two lessons, Tayla and her students established the criteria for success for designing and making their percussion instruments to meet the competition rules. This process proceeded through a series of connected meso and micro tasks. In whole class discussion the students recalled the ideas they had learned in a science unit on sound, including how sound is produced, how it travels, how to produce a loudersofter (volume) sound, a higherlower (pitch) sound and clarity of tone. They discussed photographs of percussion instruments displayed on an interactive whiteboard (IWB). They considered the durability, robustness, and resonation of the component materials and the overall functionality of the depicted instruments. They interrogated design drawings of percussion instruments to help them think about the diagrams they might draw of their own instrument, and how they might annotate their drawings. Tayla asked several students who had been involved with a similar competition the previous year to share any advice they had. These students commented that they needed to make instruments that would last through rehearsals and the performance and that would produce volume appropriate for a large venue. One student explained that the previous year they couldnt make a loud enough sound. We need to make our beaters bigger, larger and heavier. Tayla reinforced to the class that these students would be good resource people, commenting: Theyve done this before and know what worked and what didnt. Following these tasks, the class developed criteria for their percussion instruments. These are shown in Table 5.1. The discussion of the macro technology task, recall of ideas about sound, the guided examination of photographs and design drawings, and the setting of criteria
Table 5.1. Criteria for creating percussion instruments Criteria It must look goodaesthetics It must resonate It must be robust and durable It must be portable It should have different tone or pitch It must be made of recycled farm materials It must be cost effective Purpose So that people want to play it, so that it is pleasing to the eye and ear So that it has a clear sound that carries So that it will last a long time and you can play it more than once So that you can transport it easily to different performances So that it has more than one sound So it meets the rules of the competition So that it doesnt cost too much

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for the percussion instruments laid the foundations for the students to develop a feasible design. Through participating in the guided analysis and talking together, the students pooled their ideas and came to a takenasshared understanding of the criteria/technological design specifications that would lead to a high quality product. The combination of modes and media to develop and articulate the criteria assisted the students to understand the macro task requirement and possible challenges. Taylas identification of students with relevant prior knowledge and experience alerted the class to the knowledge base in their midst. For the remainder of this telling example we zoom in on a group of three boys, David, Garth and Tim, who made a xylophone. In the third lesson the students in their working groups examined three instruments, including one that was similar to the instrument they might make. A worksheet structured their examination of the parts, attachments, materials and how and what sound a particular instrument made. It prompted them to investigate the ways each instrument changed pitch and volume. David, Garth and Tim were interested in the xylophone. They worked out that there were graduated tubular bars, holders that kept the bars in place, a horizontal rack on which the bars rested and a hard mallet for striking the bars. While they were analysing, Tayla came to assess their progress. Tayla: What parts has it got? I see youve written down keys. Im presuming when you talk about keys youre talking about the bars? David: Yes, the metal bars. Tayla: If I take off a few of these [she removes three bars], do you see any additional parts that you didnt see before? Tim [pointing]: Yes, this ropey bit. Tayla: There must be a reason for that being there? [She taps the rope] It looks like a shoelace. David: Perhaps its got something to do with the sound. Tayla: Mmm. And youve got these here [she points to the dividers on the rack] to keep the bars separated and in place. So you will need to write those parts down too, because if youre going to make one, youll need to know the parts to include so your instrument will make sound. In this conversation Tayla provided feedback on a number of aspects of the boys analysis based on their worksheet drawings and comments. She told the boys the correct terminology (bars not keys). She encouraged a deeper examination of the xylophone by taking off the bars and asking if they could see any additional parts that you didnt see before. When Tim noticed the material that supported the bars, Tayla wondered about its purpose. This encouraged David to surmise that this material and construction might be related to sound making. Here, Taylas vague response positioned Davids ideas as open for consideration. Next, she pointed out the dividers that kept the bars in place and separate, thereby prompting further
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observation and analysis. Taylas concluding comments reiterated the rationale behind the need for careful analysis and recording: they needed to note all parts to ensure that their instrument would work. Based on their analysis the boys decided to make a xylophone. Before sketching their individual concept designs, they conducted a survey of the construction materials. Then they each sketched out their own concept. Next, they talked together about and critiqued their individual annotated sketches. They decided to use Tims sketch (Figure 5.15) as a foundation for developing their group xylophone. The idea of the bucket appealed!

Figure 5.15. Tims sketch with bucket.

They all went to collect their materials. Unfortunately, another group had already claimed the only bucket! The boys assessed the material that remained and David picked up some offcut timber. He announced enthusiastically to the others: What about this? This is a bit more like a real xylophone anyway. By asking each student to sketch his or her ideas, Tayla had ensured that every student needed to think about the task. At the same time, she was able to access individual student thinking. This individual sketching also meant that every student had something to contribute to group discussion. The boys concept sketches were detailed enough for them to consider the feasibility of each design (Kimbell, 1994), and subsequently, to discuss to a consensus the design they would use. Group discussion required each of the students to articulate the thinking behind their sketch. It went some way towards compensating for the restricted nature of their design drawing skills. It provided Tayla with further insights to the understandings of some students. In the fourth lesson Tayla introduced the idea of preparing a blueprint for construction. She showed a number of different blueprints on the IWB, pointing to the common features, including for example, measurements, construction techniques and materials. Tayla then provided an A3sized design worksheet to each group of students for them to use to create their own blueprint. David, Garth and Tim created their first joint design drawings on the worksheet. They produced six small, labelled, concept sketches (Figure 5.16). An examination of real blueprints helped the students realise some features of blueprints by comparing what was the same and/or different. Taylas questioning
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Figure 5.16. David, Garth & Tims concept sketches.

directed student attention to features of blueprints she wanted them to understand and then be able to incorporate in their own blueprints. The worksheet instructions framed the design process, both conceptually and socially. The worksheet instructions reminded the students to create a diagram of their proposed instrument, label their resources, and annotate their attachment methods. Having one worksheet per group provided a scaffold for the development of a collective design. The size of the worksheet meant the drawings could be of a size that all group members could readily see, and annotate if they wished. There was space to work on their blueprint collectively. The boys sketches show the bars in descending size, the triangular rack made from wood and glued and nailed at the corners, how nails will be used to separate the bars, how string will be woven between the nails to lift the bars off the rack, the finished xylophone, and two beaters. However, only some of the requirements of a blueprint were operationalised. No construction steps or measurements were specified and no information was given about how to construct the triangular base. Nevertheless, we see the influence of their examination of the real xylophone and their chosen materials. We can infer they had designed with a real artefact and materials in mind, a challenging task for students. When Tayla came to talk with the boys she indicated to them that she could not see how they were going to proceed with their construction. She prompted them to think about this: I can see that youve thought about how it might look but not enough about how you will put it together. She advised the boys that their plans needed to become a blueprint; others should be able to pick up their plan and see how to make the xylophone as they envisaged. As a result of this feedback, the boys annotated their sketches to include steps for making. Steps were detailed in sequence. They included specific criteria (e.g. make it robust) and details for the use of specialist tools and techniques (e.g. hammer them [nails] in half way, drill the five pipes in the middle). And, they made some comments about accuracy (e.g. drill 2 1/2 cm from one end). Taylas prompting led the boys to think about their construction steps. She introduced the idea of a blueprint to help them focus on the required level of construction detail. The boys subsequent actions of thinking through and adding construction steps indicated they saw the importance of Taylas feedback.
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Next, the boys began to experiment with the wood and plastic they had gathered for their xylophone. First they laid three pieces of wood on the floor in a triangular shape on the groundthese were to be the xylophone rack. Tayla came and talked to them about the problems they might encounter in constructing a triangular shape, including mitring the corners to enable this. The boys had previously learned about mitring and used this knowledge in the conversation. Tayla queried the need for a triangular shape. It was then that they decided a rectangular shape for the rack might be easier to construct than a triangular one. They went and collected another piece of wood (Figure 5.17).

Figure 5.17. Exploring xylophone shapes.

This experimentation is an important part of any technological design process. The boys used their sketches as a guide to their placing the offcut materials in a triangular configuration. However, Taylas feedback comments prompted them to think through the technical difficulties they would encounter in construction, especially mitring corners. This incident highlights the distinct affordances of the modes of sketching and material exploration as a means for thinking about the designing of a makeable reality. It was the interplay of the modes that led to an alternative configuration for their racka rectangular shape. In the fifth lesson the boys redrew their xylophone design with a rectangular rack configuration. Before they started the redesign process, Tayla reiterated the need for precision. She explained: These diagrams should tell me what youre thinking without me having to ask you too many questions. The boys began by drawing steps 1 to 3 (Figure 5.18). The drawing labelled 1 shows the two different wood lengths for the wooden rack and the annotation cut to match other end, indicating their intention to saw the wood the same length. The drawing labelled 2 shows the four pieces of wood, now the correct size, with dots to show the nails already in the wood that they will remove. The annotation is take out nails. Figure 5.18 is their completed set of drawings. Tayla returned when the boys had just completed step 3. In figure 5.19 we can see step 3 in close up, showing the rectangular placement of the four pieces of wood and the written label glue indicating their intention to only glue the joins. When Tayla looked at their drawings, she realised that the boys had not considered nailing the joints nor were there any detailed construction steps. The next extract of dialogue demonstrates how she helped the boys think through their construction steps and how she scaffolded them to think about using more than glue for their joints.
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Figure 5.18. Completed drawings.

Figure 5.19. Using only glue.

Tayla: Remember you need to outline your equipment and your construction steps. Talk me through your steps bit by bit. Tim: First off were going to cut this piece of wood, so its the same size as that [points to step 1]. Tayla: Right, thats your first step. Garth: Then once its like that, were going to take out all the nails [points to step 2]. Tayla: So thats your second steptake out the nails. Are you keeping a mental track of this? Were cutting the wood. Were taking out the nails; thats the second step. Tim: [Points to step 3] Once its like that were going to get a hot glue gun to join it. Tayla: A hot glue gun. Why a hot glue gun? David: Were going to ask Mr T about what might be the best connection. Tayla: The best connection. Just one thing, what do you think makes the best connection for wood and wood? Garth: Nail the ends. Tayla: Nails. David: So, were going to put glue in there as well as the nails. Tim: Its like so it will stick together better.

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Tayla: Make it stronger, robust, really strong and really robust. Tim: Yeah, well put in the glue; then nail it. Tayla did not take for granted that she understood the boys construction intention, hence her request that they outline their construction steps: First off were going to cut this piece of wood. Then once its like that, were going to take out all the nails. Tayla reinforced the steps the boys were proposing by numbering them and sometimes reiterating them: Right, thats your first step. So thats your second steptake out the nails. Up to this point Tayla had not queried any steps, implying that these steps were logical and workable to her. However, when Tayla queried the decision to only hot glue the wood together, David responded by explaining that they would ask Mr T about the best connection. Mr T was their hard materials teacher and the students had free access to him and the knowledge he held. Davids response signalled that he knew that it was useful to call experts for feedback and that the classroom culture was one that enabled this. Garths suggestion to use nails was picked up by all three boys. They concluded that glue and nails together would make a better joint. Taylas final comment affirmed the use of nails and glue by linking this option to the criteria of robustness. Next, Tayla asked the boys to show her where they wanted the connections to be. The boys pointed to the edges of the adjoining pieces of wood. Tayla queried: Thats where you want the connection isnt it? You want that to be firmly attached to that? She pointed with a pencil to the adjoining pieces of wood. The boys nodded in agreement. She then showed them that one method for using nails to join adjoining wood was to hammer two nails at each joint on a 45 angle so that they crossed each other (Figure 5.20). She drew nails in the first joint in the upper left of Figure 5.21. The boys followed by then drawing crossed over nails at all four joints in the same manner (Figure 5.21). Taylas multimodal demonstration allowed the boys to think carefully through their attachment methods before they went to Mr Ts hard materials room to make their instrument. Tayla and the boys used their drawing skills to demonstrate their ideas to

Figure 5.20. Tayla showing nailing method.

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Figure 5.21. Drawing for all joints.

each other. By continuing to encourage the boys to think through their design issues, Tayla was endorsing the idea that designs can be modified. She was helping students link their design thinking to construction but within the constraints of the brief specifications. The boys continued to work in a collaborative manner with Tayla intervening and giving feedback where required. When the boys went to the hard materials technology room to construct their xylophone, they took their plans and materials with them. Tayla talked with the boys about how each pipe length would fit together on top of the rack and about the quality of sound (Figure 5.22).

Figure 5.22. Discussing fitting of pipes.

The boys trialled different positions for each piece of pipe to evaluate the most effective position for producing the best sound i.e. either aligned with the bottom edge of the rack, the top edge, or centred. After investigating the various effects of the different placements, they decided that centring the pipes produced best sound quality (Figure 5.23). The boys were encouraged by Tayla to use their design brief as a guide for, and throughout, construction. Design drawings were used to help actualise ideas into real tangible forms and to develop clearer pictures of what they were constructing. They provided a means for students to draw on their knowledge base and represent this knowledge to others. As well students design drawings revealed to Tayla insights into their thinking. The significance of this example is that it illustrates the role that drawings can play in scaffolding dialogue between teachers and students, and amongst students,
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Figure 5.23. Centring pipes.

when they are viewed as improvable objects. Drawing, experimenting, making, examining and discussing in dynamic combination allowed the boys to work systematically to improve their understanding of the different dimensions of the technological task. The series of drawings and associated constructions provided a record of the development of their ideas and so allowed them to be sure that progress had been made and what that progress consisted of (Wells, 1999). As persistent modes, the drawings and constructions enabled the group, as well as individuals, to progress their learning. These permanent artefacts reflected aspects of the boys thinking, thereby making them available for review, rethinking and revision in discussion with the teacher when she visited the group. Without this record it is hard to see how Tayla could have so effectively targeted her questioning to extend the boys thinking and skills. Teachers, as more knowledgeable and technically competent, can assist students technological development by scaffolding them through the design and make process. To enhance the iterative process between designing and making, students need to be cued by the teacher to undertake focused design drawing with making in mind. The students can then use their drawings as useful reference points for group discussion making. Student drawings are an important vehicle for teachers to learn about their students perspectives. In technology drawings can be a reciprocal means, and provide opportunities, for the teacher and students to enter into collaborative and fruitful dialogue about what is being designed. Augmenting Talk and Writing with Modelling, Demonstrative Action and RolePlay Our next two examples flesh out other aspects of the multimodality of AfL in the InSiTE primary classrooms. The InSiTE teachers valued handson activities because they considered that students learned from and enjoyed being actively involved in the learning process and so they provided ample opportunities to use action as a mode. The teachers guided students to act out practices and ideas. The teachers themselves modelled and demonstrated skills, practices and the conduct of tasks. They modelled how to record results and complete worksheets and at the same time they introduced related vocabulary and ideas. Teacher actions and talk provided a model of how to act and speak scientifically/technologically. In the following
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examples, action augmented and complemented talk and writing to enrich the communication and meaningmaking processes. During the first lesson in a science unit on force, Brenda introduced the notion of force as something that caused motion to her Year 5 and 6 students. To do this she modelled moving a pencil, a table and a ruler using exaggerated movements. As she did these actions she questioned the students about what she was doing to cause movement. She nominated a student to record student suggestions on a whiteboard. The students suggested actions of pushing, blowing, kicking, hitting and so on. At the end of this demonstration there were five lists of movement actions recorded side by side on the whiteboard. After reading what was on the whiteboard, a student called out: Miss G they all [each list] have push in them. Brenda picked up on this comment and asked the class as whole to consider to what extent the lists of actions included pushing. The class concluded that they all did. One student pointed out that some of the listed movements also included a pull, the opposite of a push. Brenda affirmed these two observations and told the class that the scientific definition of a force was that it involved a push or a pull. The students were engaged by Brendas exaggerated movements and readily contributed descriptors of them. By asking a student to write, she was able maintain the momentum of her actions and the students focus. The whiteboard lists of Brendas actions meant that students were able to look across the movement actions to synthesise and conclude what they had in common. Without the written record it seems unlikely that the student who volunteered ideas would have been able to conclude that each of the lists included a push action. Augmenting talk and action with a written record multiplied the opportunities for students to distil meaning from the activity. This allowed Brenda to draw on student ideas as a legitimate resource for developing a definition of force. During the third lesson in a fourlesson technology unit on making healthy snacks, Lois introduced the notion of a batch production line as mechanism for a group of people to work together to her Year 1 to 4 students. She did this by dramatising the process of making a peanut butter sandwich. She asked two students, May and Nicki, to come to the front of the class and stand sidebyside beside her. The following dialogue ensued: Lois: Now what is my job? [She pretends to pick up a slice of bread] I am going to put on the butter. May, you will put on the peanut butter. Nicki, you will cut it. Could I put the peanut butter on? Class: No. Lois: Could I cut it? Class: No. Lois: I dont do Mays job and she doesnt do mine? Lets act it out. [Louise pretends to butter the bread] Im buttering the bread. [She hands on the sandwich to May. May pretends to put on peanut butter.]

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Lois: May is putting on the peanut butter. [May hands on the sandwich to Nicki. Nicki pretends to cut the sandwich.] Lois: Nicki is cutting the sandwich. So, we all have our own jobs. I dont do Mays job. I dont do Nickis job. I do mine. Now, for each group, the first task is to talk about the healthy snack you are going to make. Then you need to decide on the jobs and write down who is going to do what. The students moved off into their groups to decide on the roles and responsibilities for each person in their particular production line. When Lois arrived at the groups, she probed to find out who was going to do what. If there was confusion she reminded them of the roleplay. When the students were back sitting together on the mat, Lois asked about the production line. The students were able to explain to her: Its a line where people have different jobs. That the students understood the key features of a production line was confirmed the next day when they produced their actual healthy snack. Our teachers sometimes asked students to act out ideas and processes. In this case Lois used a roleplay to illustrate her explanation of a batch production line, which was a new idea to the students. This provided three entry points to the idea: a description, the actions, and the talk and action together. Her involving two students in roleplay was important as the other students obviously identified with them. This demonstration helped students gain a sense of the conduct of a production line and the part they would need to play. Preparing a written plan for their batchproduced snack forced them to clarify roles and responsibilities. It was an important reminder of their thinking the next day when it guided their actions to produce their snack. Just as importantly, student demonstrative action was an authentic expression of their understandingthey needed to work together as a production line team for them to produce their snack in an efficient manner and according to the recipe.
CHALLENGES IN THE USE OF MULTIPLE MODES

There was evidence from our classroom work that student use of each of the modes was a knowledgeable activity. While the teachers were always careful to introduce and explain the language of science and technology, they came to realise the need to make explicit the practices associated with other modes. For example, the use of drawing to anchor and augment talk was not without challenge. The teachers joint analysis of student drawings at one of the team meetings provided compelling evidence that drawing, like talk and writing, is a knowledgeable and skilled activity and so students benefit from instruction in it. Some of the challenges inherent in teacher use of student drawing as a mode to help students articulate and develop their ideas were evident when Jane asked her new entrant students to draw an electric circuit as part of planning the lighting for a model theatre. The task she posed required students to draw a circuit diagram on a piece of blank paper. She provided no instruction on how to do this and in consequence the students struggled to realise the connection between their drawing and the circuit they were to make. Jane realised

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the students difficulties and discussed them with Martha, a Year 2 teacher at the same school, because she knew Martha was going to do a similar activity with her students. As a result of this conversation, Martha required her students to draw the plan for the wiring of an electric circuit for a light at the front door of their model house on the model house itself, rather than on a separate piece of paper. When she talked with her students, Martha asked them to trace their circuit with their finger and explain to her why they thought the light would glow. The practical issues that arose included whether the circuit was complete, whether someone would be able to reach the light switch, whether a person could open the door if the circuit wiring was positioned as it was on their plan, and whether the placement of the light was sensible in terms of efficiency in lighting the room. Through this process a number of students realised that they had not considered these ideas. In this instance, the students drawings provided a useful forum for teacherstudent talk about the notion and importance of a complete circuit and the need for the technological solution to be practical and useful. Marthas forethought on how to effectively demonstrate circuits mitigated some of the problems Jane encountered with her students drawing to develop ideas.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS

Our teachers and students used talk, written text, action, as well as the visual and material modes, to express what they knew and could do. Evidence of student learning was distributed across various modes and media, which at times included speech, writing, gestures, body orientation, gaze orientation, and material artifacts, such as, for example, drawings, three-dimensional models, and diagrams. Teachers and students used different modes and media to coconstruct and/or provide feedback on what students might do next. The use of a variety of modes and media enriched and resourced interactions, enhancing students opportunities to learn and progress their learning. The different modes provided different types and amounts of information and needed to be taken into consideration all together in order to understand the full meaning. In Jay Lemkes (2000a) terms, the use of an ensemble of modes multiplied meaning. Teachers and students drew on the affordances of the different modes to enhance and enrich meaning making and communication. Talk was a concise and efficient means for negotiating shared understandings and communicating ideas. The teachers explicitly focused on developing their students science and technology language proficiency but almost invariably talk was augmented by other modes. Written text anchored, augmented and complemented talked. In contrast to talk, what was written could be revisited and revised over time and consequently written records often acted to shape what came to be viewed as significant and what was remembered about an experience. Like writing, images are available for sustained examination; however, unlike written text, images are encountered all at once and in their entirety. Their interpretation revolved around understanding each part and how those parts in a

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particular spatial relationship comprised the whole. They were used to represent ideas and past and future events that could not have been expressed or represented by words and written text alone. Actions were useful for demonstrating, illustrating and enacting understandings, skills and practices. Teacher and student use of multiple and multimodal means to make meaning meant that if a student had not been paying attention or did not find a particular representation meaningful, they had multiple opportunities to express their ideas and develop shared understandings. Meaning emerged from a process of interaction, contrast and conjunction of the modes (Kress, et. al., 2001, p. 25). When multiple modes were coordinated or used in conjunction with one another, teacher and student opportunities for expressing ideas and developing shared understandings were enhanced and enriched. This then contributed to teacher and student AfL interactions and practices. We have illustrated that multimodal AfL can broadens students opportunities to represent their ideas in a manner that facilitates student agency, accommodates difference and supports the development of creativity and critical thinking. In the next chapter we focus our attention on material artefacts.

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MATERIAL ARTEFACTS AS SCENARIOS AND RESOURCES FOR IDEAS AND INTERACTION

In Chapter 5 we focused on the multimodal nature of interaction. In this chapter we direct our spotlight more closely on material artefacts. Our reasons for devoting a chapter to material artefacts are both practical and theoretical. At the beginning of the research, in line with much of the literature at that time, we took for granted students undertaking handson activities in science and technology. Over the course of the study, along with our teachers, we came to appreciate the role material artefacts played in mediating AfL interactions. Our deepening understanding of a sociocultural perspective was important in this process, alerting us to the extent to which material artefacts, along with social and cultural aspects, are not simply a source of stimulation and guidance but vehicles of thought (Salomon, 1993, p. xiii). Hence, we were more interested in the role material artefacts played in AfL interactions, and particularly if we might enhance AfL through a more careful consideration, design and use of artefacts.
WHY A FOCUS ON MATERIAL ARTEFACTS?

Three ideas have been important in our thinking about the role of material artefacts in embodying ideas and affording AfL interactions. The first is that material artefacts and phenomena have no intrinsic meaning. This seems obvious but it serves to remind us that how teachers introduce and talk artefacts into social meaning and action is crucial (Driver, et. al., 1994; Mercer, 1995). As James Wertsch (1991) explains it: Only by being part of action do meditational means come into being and play their role. They have no magical power in and of themselves (p. 119). This also alerted us to the need for careful selection of the real artefacts used to exemplify ideas and for the design of teaching artefacts to take into account how they will support interaction and not just use (Wenger, 1998). When this happens, as we will show, material artefacts can provide both scenarios and resources for ideas and interaction (Roth, 2005; Wells, 2002). The second idea that influenced our thinking and that of our teachers was our understanding that artefacts have both material and conceptual aspects (Cole & Engestrm, 1993). Gordon Wells (2002) explained the contribution of this duality thus: The materiality of the object is critical in allowing it to become a focus on joint activitysomething that can be sensually perceived, handled and acted on. At the same time, it is the symbolic aspect of the object that allows it to participate in the students progressive attempts to increase their understanding of the phenomena under investigation. (p. 45)
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In technologists terminology, material objects have a form and a function and these two aspects are inextricably intertwined. As Marc de Vries (2005) explains it, technologists design artefacts with physical features that afford certain functions. What this means is that teachers need to discern the appropriate physical attributes (size, shape, number of parts, etc.) to enable student realisation of the intended learning and they need to keep in mind that it is the user who ascribes a function to an artefact. The third feature of material artefacts is that, unlike speech, they can be revisited (Werstch, 1998); material artefacts can be interrogated, altered and improved over time because they endure (Jordan & Henderson, 1995; Roth, 2005). In talking about this aspect of the role of artefacts in supporting interaction in the classroom, Geraldine McDonald, Huong Le, Joanna Higgins and Valerie Podmore (2005) explain: They [artefacts] are simultaneously a record of the past and an agent for transmission of their meaning and use into the future (p. 114). Reigjo Miettenen (2001) encapsulates this idea in a way that brings the designer and user to the fore as follows: Artefacts carry intentions and norms of cognition and form part of the agency of the activity, expressing their agency also as resistance (p. 301). Put another way, action and interaction are mediated by the artefacts available in a setting where these carry past knowing into the present in the form of practices that those artefacts afford and at the same time constrain the forms of action that are likely to emerge (Wells, 2003). For all these reasons we consider that it is necessary to take explicit account of the role material artefacts play in AfL, and in particular to consider how they support and scaffold students active participation in and development of expertise with disciplinary practices, ideas and ways of talking. The InSiTE teachers considered their students enjoyed and benefited from hands on learning activities and so many of the tasks and interactions we observed incorporated the use of material artefacts. Teachers devoted considerable time to the production and collection of artefacts. Their planning (see Chapter 4) included the artefacts they would use as well as how they would be used. In classrooms they then used these artefacts to complement, anchor, and scaffold student interaction and learning to the extent that they were integral and inseparable components of these activities (Engestrm, 1999, p. 29). The material artefacts teachers used included actual objects such as fossils, tongs, signs, kites, test tubes and musical instruments and educative artefacts such as worksheets, books and wall displays. Written inscriptions, such as charts and captions of student responses, produced during interactions, also served as artefacts in subsequent interactions. Next we describe the affordances of this range of artefacts for AfL.
THE VALUE OF CONCRETE EXAMPLES: INTERACTING WITH REAL ARTEFACTS

The Use of Real Artefacts in Science Science is, as Michael Ford and Ellice Forman (2006) remind us, both a material and a social practice. Science is a material practice in the sense that scientists study the natural world and the explanations they have developed have evolved alongside the

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tools to which scientists have to frame and measure the natural world. The role of the telescope in Galileos explanation of the movement of the planets and the development of technology that has allowed the mapping of the genome are two examples of this dimension of materiality. However, while claims about the natural world are developed and tested via data collection, quantification, and representation (in texts, graphs, pictures), what comes to count as an acceptable claim within the scientific community is the outcome of a process of rigorous critique and peer review. This social dimension of science is important. The InSiTE teachers leveraged the material and social dimensions of science and their interaction in support of student learning and student participation in AfL. The teachers were aware that their students background experiences and prior knowledge were very diverse, which meant they could not assume their classes had a pool of shared experiences that they could use as a resource for learning. The teachers often used collections of real artefacts to build common knowledge (Edwards & Mercer, 1987). For instance, when Jane noticed that one of the students in her New Entrant to Year 1 class did not know what a seed was, she spent some whole class time guiding the students in the examination of different types of seeds. The ensuing discussion included observations about the different shapes, sizes, colours and textures of the seeds, cones and bulbs Jane had collected. Jane placed these on the class nature table in the corner of the classroom. Subsequently, the table became a place where students gathered to examine these seeds and others that students had brought in from home. Jane also noticed that a number of students had not experienced gardening or growing plants and so she took the class to visit the school gardens and talk to the school gardener about his plans for future planting. Observing and handling real objects was important for Lois Year 1 to 4 students during a unit on fossils. Lois initial exploration of student prior knowledge suggested that not many students knew what a fossil was, or had seen one. However, when the students saw some actual fossils, those who had not been able to make meaning from the term alone then realised they did know what they were. In this case Lois had deliberately selected examples that were large and robust enough for the students to handle, and recognisable as being of previously living things (plants or animals). By presenting the students with a number of different fossils to examine, Lois established fossils as a significant, intriguing object of inquiry. As they worked in small groups, one student recorded the groups thoughts in text and/or drawings on a thought bubble worksheet that contained brief prompts for the studentsWhat was this fossil? Where was it found? What is it embedded in? The prompts served as a surrogate source of teacher authority and control when the teacher was not physically present. Both the thought bubble worksheets as material artefacts, and the inquiry question on each, coordinated and resourced the group interactions around the real fossils examples. Students were activated as dialogue partners whose questions prompted others to explain and clarify ideas. For example, Amy was not sure what an imprint fossil was. When she questioned what the rock showed, Colin pointed out to her that the imprint shape was like that of a fern leaf and talked about leaving

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footprints in the sand. Lois handing out of bubble worksheets with questions allowed her to focus the students observation on various aspects of the fossils. Completing the worksheet guided the students examination of the real fossils towards a more systematic scientific practice and helped them develop new knowledge about fossils (Eberbach & Crowley, 2009). The fossils examination ensured that Lois and the students had a pool of taken asshared examples to refer to and that could be used to illustrate ideas in future talk. The full value of the students examining a set of actual fossils became evident on day two when Lois encouraged the students to identify what was the same for all the fossils they had examined. She prompted them to think of what the fossils were made of, what was encased, and where they might have been found. She scribed a somewhat formalised version of the students suggestions, thereby making a link to more scientific ways of talking about fossils. What was interesting here was that although the students exercised individual agency in contributing ideas, the collective development of takenasshared and legitimate knowledge was constrained, under Loiss guidance. What Lois scribed provided a strong signal to the students about what was important for them to know and learn out of all the student ideas. Lois posted her scribed class summary sheet, along with the group thought bubble sheets, on a wall display. In later lessons the wall display served as a frequently used reference point. That the examples Lois selected served to map the conceptual landscape for what might count as a fossil became evident in a later lesson. Lois had not included a fossil of a living animal in the set and the students comments indicated they had therefore concluded that fossils could only be of animals or plants that are extinct. Teacher use of real objects highlighted that student access to the conceptual and physical aspects of an artefact was related to its size and location: size needs to be relative to the setting in which an artefact is being used. This was clearly illustrated in a teaching sequence about moulds. Tayla had prepared a wall display of a range of foods enclosed in snaplock plastic bags so that her Year 7 and 8 students could monitor their decomposition over time. The students brought in a range of mouldy fruit, which they examined using microscopes. In the second lesson all the students examined the mould on a sample of feijoa (at this time, it was likely many home gardens would be producing feijoa fruit), pointing at and talking about what they could see. Their comments were very general along the lines that it looked whiskery, mushy and yucky. Tayla then projected an x60 digital microscope image of the mould onto an interactive whiteboard. Student descriptive talk continued but this time they were able to see more detail of the mould: the spores were apparent (Figure 6.1). When Tayla increased the magnification to x200 there were exclamations of amazement from the students. They made comments such as Its all spores. You can see the hyphae and Its like a wet spiders web. Once the initial response died down, Tayla drew students attention to a large wall chart that illustrated and labelled the parts of mould. She encouraged the students to use the scientific names for the parts of the mould in the magnified image. Tayla went on to show the students a number of moulds. The various images reinforced the view that all the moulds had
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Figure 6.1. Microscope image.

spores, hyphae and mycelium. Tayla concluded: Even though they are different to our own eyes, they are actually the same. By using the large projected images, Tayla was able to guide the development of individual student understanding of the specific parts of mould because she was able to monitor student attention towards the projected image and overhear group discussion. The image was striking. This coupled with its novelty (a large image of something very small) served as a focus for student individual and collective physical and intellectual attention. Taylas use of the digital microscope added an extra dimension to students examination; they were able to see the structure of the real thing. At the end of the unit the students used these terms to describe mould, with one student explaining: Mould is a spore that has Hyphae that makes Mycelium and you have mould. A spore reproduces and makes more, so it is living. It is one of the six Kingdoms and it is a fungi. We talked with students about examining and using real artefacts for science learning. In most cases they talked of the aesthetic as well as the conceptual aspects of the learning process, expressing a sense of pleasure at being able to handle materials, commenting on whether objects were beautiful or ugly (Wickmann, 2006). In illustration we showcase comments from Year 7 students about a fish dissection they undertook to help them build their ideas about adaptation. Shika: I really liked the fish dissection. It was gross, but fun. I learnt that they had nostrils, and hearts that are small and very soft. Charlotte: Dissection was not the nicest thing, but I could see inside and it had all these parts that enable it to live in that place, like the gills to breathe underwater. When youre at the beach you dont normally see the fish and the parts that enable them to live there; all you can see is the outside. Carli: The dissection was gross. I didnt touch the fish at all, but I learnt where the different parts of the fish are and how the different features help it live. Of note is how the dissection vividly exhibited fish intestines, thus providing students with opportunities for intense scrutiny. Though the activity also impacted emotionally on students, they were astute enough to recognise the insights it gave them.
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The Use of Real Artefacts in Technology The most immediate way we meet technology everyday is through the technical artefacts that surround us. We see buildings, cars and traffic lights and we use chairs, pens, sheets of paper and computers, and so on. Ineke Frederik, Wim Sonneveld and Marc de Vries (2011) ask quite reasonably then: What could be a more natural starting point for teaching and learning about technology than studying the nature of these artifacts? (p. 123). They go on to ask how we might teach about artefacts in a way that makes a serious contribution to technological literacy, suggesting that although helping students become acquainted with a variety of artefacts is a good starting point this is not enough. Artefacts quickly become outdated. Students need to learn to recognise characteristics of the artefact that are not specific to that artefact, but that relate to the nature of all technical artefacts, their design and development. The InSiTE teachers use of real artefacts in technology differed somewhat from their use of artefacts in science in that it tended to be more elaborated, in part because technology involves problem solving and innovation based around an understanding of currently available solutions. Many technological innovations involve the adaptation or modification of a particular product. Technologists are constrained in their development of technological design solutions by their access to conceptual and material resources. Design work is an evolutionary process whereby technologists build from current best practice/solutions as part of innovation. New materials and tools afford new arrangements and solutions. Consistent with this premise, our teachers orchestrated student analysis of a range of pertinent artefacts as part of technology teaching sequences where the macro task involved student development of a like artefact. These examinations, as with the informed use of all artefacts, required an appreciation of both the physical and conceptual aspects of an artefact, often referred to by technologists as the form and function. The analysis of the relevant features and characteristics of a set of artefacts provided an entry point for the discussion and development of a consensus about the technological concepts and processes relevant to the macro design task. Student design work was grounded in the examination of existing technological artefacts to distil key features and their success criteria. Teacher guidance was important in helping students to appreciate both these aspects and their relationship. This understanding of form and function then served as a basis for student assessment of their artefact during its production and in its final form. With appropriate teacher guidance real artefacts became a rich and powerful source of ideas and feedback. For example, Grants Year 58 students had the task of designing and making outdoor signs for their school. Initially Grant took his students on a discovery walk around the neighbourhood to examine signs in situ to discern their shape, their visual impact and fitness for purpose. He also took photographs of many signs around the town and neighbourhood and placed them in a PowerPoint presentation, which he showed to the students. In addition he gave printouts of the photographs to each student. These were referred to by individual students throughout the course of the unit as an ongoing, permanent source of information. Access was at individual

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student discretion and unregulated by Grant. Students could think alone. Grants students examined the PowerPoint photographs as a class and discussed their salient features related to aesthetics and purpose such as the lettering, sign shape, the use of colour, the use of symbols instead of words, and sign backgrounds. They also discussed material and construction aspects such as placement of signs, how signs are joined to poles and the use of robust, weatherproofed material. The class discussion meant students could pool their knowledge, compare ideas and at the same time build common knowledge. They were thinking together. Students used this information, and the information they had gleaned from their walk, to establish the specifications for their own signs. These were size (does it suit the purpose?), shape (is it functional?), colours (do they stand out?), lettering and icons (are they clear?), building skills (is it made correctly?), placement of sign (will it be useful and seen?). As was often the case in our teachers technology units, task and product specifications doubled as self and product evaluation criteria. Features such as suitable materials, weatherproofing, structural stability, and sign and lettering size and colour were evident in the students final products. Incorporating these features was critical given that the signs were to be actually used in the school grounds (Figures 6.2, 6.3 and 6.4 show some of the completed signs in situ).

6.2. Sarahs pool sign.

6.3. JulieMays car park sign. Figures 6.2 to 6.4. School signs.

6.4. Hines office sign.

Donnas Year 5 and 6 students examination of a range of hinges was pivotal to their appreciating the significance of hinges in umbrellas and to their coming to understanding the form and function of hinges in general. Donna introduced the hinges when the students became stuck in terms of how to get an umbrella to fold. Janes Year 1 students undertook a detailed examination of a commercially produced kite before making a similar kite of their own. The examination and analysis focused students not only on the kite components (cover, braces, bridle), but also on construction techniques such as reinforcing the corners and the orientation of the braces and the bridle. As they passed around the commercial kite, different students could be heard talking to each other about the parts of the kite, using the vocabulary Jane had just introduced as they actively probed the way the corners were constructed. Gails Year 3 and 4 students made a teacherguided examination of a set of tong like artefacts before producing a tong themselves. With the students in a semicircle,

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Gail introduced a number of tonglike tools. The tools included fire tongs, salad tongs, a stapler, a nutcracker, an egg slice, scissors and a bulldog clip. Gail pulled them out of a bucket one at a time, held them up and asked, What do they do? This elicited words from the students such as pull, cut and wind. Gail: What are these [fire tongs] used for? Would I use them in a salad? Students: No. Janet: Hot things, metal. Gail: Think about in a home in the olden times. John: Fireplaces. Ive seen them used there. Gail: Yes, for picking up hot coals. Gail named the tool when students were unable to. She demonstrated its action and function before passing it around the circle so students could hold and manipulate each of the tools. Gail then placed it inside the circle. One student offered her hairgrip as a tong that was similar to the bulldog clip, indicating she had synthesised the main features of a tong. This was also placed on the mat (Figure 6.5).

Figure 6.5. Students examining tongtype tools.

Next, Gail placed the students into groups of four and gave each group a worksheet. This included a photocopied picture (real size) of one of the tongtype tools from the mat. The students recorded the tools measurements, shape, flexibility and purpose. The worksheets helped the groups work together to talk about their tool and to come to a shared consensus on its characteristics (Figure 6.6). These completed worksheets were placed around the classroom with the associated real tool. Each group was then given another worksheet, which took the form of a table. This had spaces for them to record the information from each of the individual worksheets under the following headings: tong name, size in centimetres, shape, material it is made from, flexibility and used for. Again the use of a worksheet with prompts helped the students to focus their ideas and to reach agreement. The students next discussed their summary sheets as a class to identify tongness and

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Figure 6.6. Students, the worksheet and real artefacts.

establish the criteria for developing and making their own tong. The class discussion encouraged students to pool their knowledge, compare ideas and at the same time build common knowledge. Gails recording of this discussion is shown in Figure 6.7.

Figure 6.7. Gails record of a class discussion for tongs.

We see from Gails whiteboard list of student ideas that the group activities and pooling of ideas was productive. Gail then typed up these criteria overnight and the class began the next lesson by reviewing them. Gail posted the criteria poster on her easel throughout the unit and directed the students to use the criteria to evaluate their finished tongs. After the unit Gail discussed with us the value of using authentic artefacts. She said she had planned for the students to examine a range of tools to assist them to develop a shared understanding of tools as designed objects with a specific purpose. As she anticipated, the use of real artefacts allowed the students to see indepth how tongtype tools worked and to identify similarities and differences between tongtype tools. This led to the students development of takenasshared criteria for tongness. She explained: Without them [the real artefacts], it would have been very hard to explain what was required in order to create the models. To sum up, real artefacts played a role in helping students make explicit and extend their understandings. They fostered dialogue and introduced and built vocabulary.

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Real artefacts supported the development of shared or common ideas. In technology, in particular, they often played a pivotal role in student development and understanding of criteria for creating and assessing their designed product.
TEACHERDESIGNED ARTEFACTS AUGMENT TALK

Our teachers used a range of their own designed artefacts to stimulate student interest, to cue student prior knowledge, to provoke student questions, and to introduce and explore new ideas, processes and skills. For instance, as part of a technology unit on cheese modification, Brenda got her Year 5 and 6 students to taste test three commercial cheeses. Her intention was that this task would introduce students to how to conduct a taste test while simultaneously providing a shared experience for later reference and discussion. She planned the experience as preparation for the students modifying the flavour of a fresh cheese they would make themselves. To introduce the taste test process and the criteria students should use to analyse and rate the cheeses, Brenda prepared a Characteristics of different cheeses worksheet. In the whole class setting Brenda held up an A3 copy of the worksheet and asked the students for meanings for the labels heading each category: ingredients, appearance, aroma, texture and flavour. At the same time she explained how the students would conduct the taste test and she modelled how to fill in the sheet. The following extract illustrates these points. Brenda: Each student will have a worksheet [She holds up a sample student A4 worksheet and points to the heading.] Characteristics of cheese, means what theyre like, describing them. [She points to the first category] Fill in the ingredients; Im going to put those on the board for you to fill in. Brenda: Appearance, which means, everybody? Students: Looks like. Brenda: Yeah. Brenda: Aroma, which means everybody? Students: Smell. Brenda: Yeah thats right. Were going to use that word for smell; aroma is smell. What does it smell like? When the students moved into small groups to taste test the three cheese samples, they filled in their own A4 copy of the same worksheet. Brenda had selected the three cheeses carefully to accentuate the criteria the children had to focus on with taste testing. The students experience of aroma, appearance, texture and flavour were all heightened by the contrast in the cheeses. While the students were excited by the novelty of tasting in class time, and in some cases had strong reactions to the flavour of the cheeses, the worksheet provided a focus and purpose for student action and analysis. When experiencing the tasting of real cheese, the students preferences could be explained using the criteria. Brenda encouraged the students to move
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beyond simple descriptions such as nice and yucky and to use language that would allow them to be more discerning, such as sour, sweet, spicy, creamy and so on. At one stage she held up a partially completed sheet and said: Lucas has written nice in the appearance category, which tells me he liked the look of it even if he didnt like the taste. Now hes adding what colour it was. So for appearance you might like to talk about colour. I also noticed that Jack has written cottage cheese looks mushy and lumpy. When you fill in the form, be as descriptive as you can. Student knowledge of this richer analytical language was important for the future development of students own cheesemaking choices and processes. In this example, the teacherdesigned worksheet in its two guises anchored interaction. As an A3 presentation tool it provided an easily readable and persistent public representation of the key criteria to be used in taste testing and was a referent for talk and gesture. It allowed Brenda to model the process for the completion of the taste test in a way that was visible to all of the students. By providing students with the A4 worksheet to guide their taste testing, Brenda was free to circulate the room to offer help and feedback. Brenda was well aware of this function: These sheets act as a teaching tool for students and me. I wanted them to know where they were going and it keeps me on track. The pattern of this example was replicated many times when our teachers introduced their students to new ideas and processes using artefacts they had designed for this purpose as a scenario and resource for interaction. Our teachers sometimes provided students with sets of material resources to be manipulated as an adjunct to talk. In both the whole class and small group setting, these sets served as an interactive tool that provided a dynamic visual representation of the group consensus thinking at any one time. The manipulation of the sets supported the discernable involvement of a number of students. Students were encouraged to articulate and justify their ideas because they needed to explain their reasoning when they moved an artefact. An example of this is when Gail asked her Year 4 to 5 students to sort a set of cards that identified different materials (paper, wood, sandpaper and so on). The students sorted the cards along a continuum based on which would produce the most to the least friction as a road for a toy racing car (Figure 6.8).

Figure 6.8. Students sorting cards.

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The material names were each on different cards and so the students were easily able to change their position on the basis of ongoing discussion. The large text meant that is was easy for the students to read the cards and make their own assessment of the current ranking. Students actively engaged in this process, most of them initiating their engagement by reordering a card. This activity seemed to engage more students than a whole class discussion based around a teacherproduced worksheet. To sum up, artefacts were designed and used by teachers to organise, bound and guide the flow of activity and talk. An artefacts form and function, both the physical and conceptual aspects (Engestrm, Miettenen & Punamaki, 1999) played a role in the success of and challenges to artefact use for each of these purposes. In whole class and small group social configurations, sets of artefacts served as an interactive tool for groups and classes to develop and showcase their ideas. The manipulation of the sets encouraged students to articulate and justify their ideas because they needed to explain their reasoning when they moved an artefact.

ARTEFACTS TO ACTIVATE AND PROBLEMATISE STUDENT KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES

Student comments and actions indicated that they often came to lessons with understandings that differed from those considered viable by scientists and technologists. Added to this, they were not always aware of the most efficient and effective ways of undertaking tasks or carrying out activities such as taste testing, making microscope slides and cutting to a prescribed shape. When tasks or teacher interactive questioning made these discrepancies explicit, it was possible to trace changes in student ideas and practices. Using a set of artefacts to problematise the main learning idea was particularly effective because it promoted talk, and this talking helped to resolve differences. In a science example Jane asked her Year 1 students to sort small plastic vials of flour, sugar, baking powder and vanilla, a small pat of butter, and an egg, into wet and dry sets. For this sorting activity she first handed out two labelsone said wet and the other dry. Then she asked the students to sort the ingredients for each set. She knew her students could sort into either/or categories when they used real artefacts for categorisation. Later Jane asked them to sort the ingredients into solid and liquid. With the exception of the egg, the students had no difficulties categorising the ingredients (Figure 6.9). The students debated the placement of the egg with different students moving it back and forth between the solid and liquid labels. Cathy, picking up the egg said: This is a liquid. Sean said: No, its not. Its a solid. Look at the shell. Jane, when she noticed this interaction, asked the students to explain the basis of their dilemma. Emily moved the egg to the middle, saying: Its both. The outside is solid. The inside is liquid. Lets put it here. Cathy was not convinced: Theres more liquid. In a later

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Figure 6.9. Students pondering where to place the egg.

interview Jane explained that she had deliberately planted the egg, knowing that it would generate debate. As Jane had planned, the dilemma of where to place the egg stimulated active student engagement and discussion around the distinction between, and definitions of, dry and wet and later, liquid and solid. Janes intervention in discussing the egg placement with the class ensured all the students were aware of the dilemma the egg posed and that the talk evolved in the direction of her intended learning (to think about the differences between liquids and solids). In this example, the depth of Janes science PCK for the teaching of these concepts to very young students was evident in the synergy that emerged between the task and the artefacts she selected, the students, and the science ideas of solid and liquid. Working with real artefacts allowed the students to explore abstract aspects of science concepts. In technology Lois included a muesli bar and a container of yoghurt in an artefact sort of food using the categories healthy and unhealthy. The quandary that these provoked ensured that her Year 1 to 4 students alternative views would surface. She orchestrated the sorting as a prelude to a task where her students would develop a healthy snack. Initially the students were placed in groups and each group was given a selection of food and a chart with healthy/unhealthy labels written at the top. The students confidently organised their selections into two groups: healthy and unhealthy. The students prior learning about healthy foods informed their decisionmaking process. Lois then called the students back to the mat to draw student attention to the nutritional information on the food packages. Lois set up the task by explaining: Were going to make a chart of all the snack foods that are healthy and unhealthy. Olly, will you pull out one food? We need to put thumbs up if we think it is healthy and thumbs down if we think it is unhealthy. Olly pulled out some carrots and all the students put their thumbs up. Olly told Lois carrots were healthy cos it grows in the ground. Lois wrote carrots on the healthy side of the twocolumn chart she had prepared. Olly put the bag of carrots

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on the healthy side of the chart. The thumbs up strategy meant that all of the students could show their decision. This process continued for all the foods Lois had collected; however, when the students were unsure how to classify a muesli bar, Lois suggested they justify their choice using the food pyramid displayed on the easel beside her. When Olly pulled out the muesli bar, most students had their thumbs up. Lois: Where is it on the food pyramid? Chevon: Middle. Lois: Really? Does it come from the ground? [Olly had used this justification] Where is it made? Chevon: A factory. Lois: Lets see how much sugar there is. [Lois picked up the muesli bar and read out] 9.6 grams in 30 grams of food. So thats a third sugar. [She shows them the food label]. Is that healthy or unhealthy? Students: Unhealthy. All thumbs were now down. So the muesli bar was recorded as unhealthy and placed accordingly. Cory then pulled out a container of yoghurt and the class went through a similar process until finally, at Lois insistence, they made a thumbs-up decision and recorded the yoghurt as healthy. Students concluded that they needed to reexamine their group classifications and so they went back to their groups with the food and their worksheets. For instance, Olivers group had initially put the yoghurt and the muesli bar in the healthy snack category because Yoghurt is made from milk and dairy is healthy, and There are oats in muesli bars; theyre good for you. However, after the class discussion and reading the packet information giving the sugar content, they moved both items to the unhealthy category. Oliver reasoned: Look, see here, the sugar on the muesli bar is the same as the sugar in the yoghurt. Corbin agreed that this was too high and said: They have to go on the unhealthy side then. Lois deliberate inclusion of real snacks with a high sugar content ensured that students generated dialogue in support of the bigger technology idea of food labelling. This episode illustrates the power of an item that is ambiguous and so problematises the decisionmaking process in order to generate dialogue and debate. It illustrates the reuse of a chart (a food pyramid) from a previous unit. Lois activated this artefact as part of the context for current talk and thinking by drawing the students attention to it. Lois also required all the students to participate in the decision by asking them to put their thumb up or down. This strategy had the advantage that she could see their thinking. In this example talk, action, artefacts (real foods and the chart) and inscriptions were all involved in the interactive process. This example also illustrates the need for an artefact to be activated as a resource for interactionmere physical presence is not sufficient. In these examples, as with other tasks that targeted student alternative conceptions, the apparent discrepancy within the tasks encouraged students to articulate evolving

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ideas. These tasks proved to be strong connection points for the students to bridge their everyday and science/technology understandings.
TEACHERDESIGNED ARTEFACTS TO INTRODUCE IDEAS

Teachers may act on their analysis of summarised AfL interactions to adapt and change lesson activities and sequences. Our teachers summed up where the class had got to at a particular point during a teaching sequence in a unit to take stock of the progress the class had made. They thought about, and synthesised, their interactions up to that point. This summingup information helped them to think about how the students learning accomplishments to that point fitted with their intended learning outcomes, or not, and into the sequence of teaching activities they had prepared. They could then refine next teaching steps and activities, if necessary. This stepping back to sum up often happened out of class teaching time, between one lesson and the next. It gave the teachers time to think through and or seek out ideas and resources and consequently supported them in adjusting their teaching to address the learning needs of their students. For example, Carol changed the sequencing of the activities she had planned for her second lesson in a teaching sequence on adaptation that used the rocky shore as a case. Carol needed her Year 7 students to be sure about how to distinguish each rocky shore zone when they visited a local beach. If they could not do this they would have difficulty thinking about how and why particular animals had adapted to living in a particular zone. Carol had planned to give the students a paper copy of a cross section of a rocky shore and for them to identify the zones by adding labels (see Figure 6.10). Carol had then planned that the students would allocate animals to a particular zone and write their reasons for placement. She had also planned for the students to

Figure 6.10. Rocky shore zones.

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develop descriptors for the conditions in each zone. At the end of lesson one, based on her analysis of student responses, Carol made the decision to change the order of activities for lesson two. She decided that students would develop zone descriptors first so that they could distinguish each zone before placing animals. The students developed the descriptors of each zone (Figure 6.11) and then they allocated animals to zones (Figure 6.12).

Figure 6.11. Developing descriptors.

Figure 6.12. Allocating animals.

Without this change of order, Carol reasoned that the students would have found the activity of placing animals difficult as they would not have thought deeply enough about the differences between each zone and the related features of particular animals. After their rocky shore visit the students revisited these activities. On the zone descriptor sheet they highlighted words in red if they now understood the descriptor to be wrong. They highlighted in green if the descriptor was correct and they added descriptors in blue where they had new ideas. In the cross-section, where they had allocated animals to zones, they circled those animals they now knew to be incorrectly placed and drew an arrow to indicate the correct zone. They also added in other animals found at the beach. She commented:

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Through my formative interactions I became more perceptive, more aware of taking note of student progress. I thought about what I needed to put into the next lesson and not just going onto the next, the next, and the next. I more consciously thought about where the students are and I changed lessons accordingly. The students revisiting and revising of the two activities helped them to reflect on their ideas. They had time, space and opportunity to make changes where necessary. The revisit was valuable for students to assess their progress and they also gave Carol a chance to assess student progress. The colour coding made the changes, and their extent, obvious.
CHALLENGES IN THE USE OF ARTEFACTS

There was evidence from each of our classrooms that students enjoyed and valued handson tasks, as did teachers. However, student use of artefacts was not unproblematic. This was just as much the case for real objects as it was for teacher designed artefacts and was most important when students worked in small group settings because they then interacted only intermittently with the teacher. Student engagement with their teachers task relied on them understanding the task and its associated artefacts as the teacher did. An occasion involving Janes Year 1 students shows what happens when they do not. The activity was to investigate how many ingredients they needed to mix together before they had what they would call a mixture. When the students took turns to add a small amount of a different ingredient to the jar and stir the resulting mixture, there was little discussion between them as each student concentrated on transferring the ingredients without spilling them. When Jane interacted with the groups, she realised that the students were not systematically investigating the problem. She suggested: Do you want to start again and just put one [ingredient] in and see if that makes a mixture? And then the next person could put two ingredients in and see if that makes a mixture and then the next person could put three ingredients in and could see if that makes a mixture. At Janes suggestions the students started again. They each had a turn and poured two or more spoonfuls into the jar without emptying it in between. As each student added an ingredient they each looked at their product with the magnifying glass. Again, the students didnt talk much but everyone was watching and concentrating on mixing ingredients. In this example the students initial focus was primarily on the act of carefully scooping ingredients so they did not spill. They were concerned with the technical skills involved in scooping and appeared to gain immense pleasure from successfully scooping out a small amount of a dry ingredient without it spilling. They did not investigate how many ingredients were needed to make a mixture. The conceptual learning faded into the background. Janes presence and active intervention were required for them to begin thinking about and systematically investigating

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just how many ingredients were needed to make a mixture. Jane commented after the lesson that although she had considered the technical skills and management issues involved in the task, she had not given such careful consideration to how the task would scaffold the students learning about mixtures in her absence. In this case the students did not fully appreciate the conceptual aspects of the artefacts. We found the physical aspects of artefacts influenced how collaborative activity played out. All those involved needed to be able to see or access relevant aspects, whichever was required for active engagement in the learning. Taylas use of the digital microscope in her Year 7 and 8 class to present large images of mould illustrated the value of clear whole class access to a detailed image. That the size of an artefact could limit student collaborative participation in a task was illustrated by the frustration teachers and students faced in wiring up electric circuits. On each of the three occasions we observed units on electric circuits, the teachers used very small, but inexpensive, 1.5V light bulbs. The students needed to connect the bulbs into a circuit via the metal sleeve casing and the dimple on the bottom of the bulb. Not only were the bulbs so small as to make it difficult to physically contact and connect two wires using fingers, the fingers of the student holding the wires obscured the connections so that other students could not see and understand the need to attach a wire to each of the two locations. This was evident in the student drawings and their inability to construct a working circuit in a following lesson. We found that students needed to appreciate the pertinent physical and conceptual aspects of an artefact and the relationships between these aspects for them to use an artefact as the teacher intended.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS

In the course of any lesson it is unlikely that every student will have the opportunity for individual interaction with the teacherin New Zealand classes, at least, there are just too many students. Moreover, not all students will receive the same amount or quality of teacher interactional attention. When designed, selected and introduced with learning in mind, material artefacts can afford and subsequently become embedded in social knowledgemaking processes. They can form part of the meaning systems teachers and students use and consequently play a role in supporting AfL. Artefacts can anchor, bridge, mediate and coordinate activities across settings and time, leading to a sense of continuity. Longerterm processes and shorterterm events can be linked through material artefacts. WolffMichael Roth (2005) suggests that studentmediated artefacts constitute a scenario for improvisation (p. 226). The particular form of an artefact mediates what the presenters might address and what questions the audience might ask. In our observation, different artefacts constituted different scenarios that gave rise to different topical orientations and concerns. In this chapter we focused on the role that real and teacherdesigned artefacts played in enabling and constraining AfL interactions. Theory helps explain and predict phenomena of interest; more practically it helps us pay attention to certain things in the environment that might otherwise be ignored. In our case a sociocultural orientation guided us to pay more detailed attention to routine aspects of teacher and
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student use of material artefacts (text and physical artefacts). A sociocultural lens provided a somewhat different explanation of the value of student practical and handson experiences. Tasks with a handson component allowed students to engage firsthand with the physical phenomena and investigative processes that lie at the heart of the scientific and technological endeavour, while all at once, and at the same time, supported multimodal meaning making and communication. As Lillian PozzerArdenghi and WolffMichael Roth (2007) highlight, student talk with the use of artefacts as a support helps them to take into account the complexity and distributed nature of ideas and practices. However, the role of tasks and task material resources in mediating learning can be opaque to students (Lave & Wenger, 1991). The physical dimensions of material resources are an important contributor to the efficacy of a task in mediating the focus and temporal evolution of talk across different social configurations and physical arrangements (Roth, McGinn, Woszczyna, & Boutonne, 1999). The artefacts our teachers used provided scenarios and resources for interaction through the interplay of their material and conceptual aspects. Material artefacts produced beforehand by teachers and constructed by teachers and students during the course of a lesson mediated meaning making and communication. They supported, constrained and enabled learning and assessment of that learning through the way they helped to make visible the multimodal nature of these processes. Yet the positive influence of an artefact on interaction was not a given. This influence depended on how the teacher introduced the task and its associated artefacts and how these artefacts became entangled in interaction. An artefacts influence on and meaning within interactions were situated in the context of a particular task. In science lessons, teachers used natural objects to ensure their students had a breadth of shared experiences to call on to inform the development of their ideas and practices. In technology lessons, teachers used made objects to stimulate student thinking and provide a basis for innovation. The teachers also designed and produced artefacts intended to focus and scaffold student learning, such as worksheets and sets of objects that could be manipulated. In this chapter we made a distinction between artefacts that could be seen and used by a few people and those that were viewed and used by a class as a whole. Whole class public displays supported the general availability of the information they displayed. They coordinated attention and meaning making across time, space and individuals. Artefacts used by a few people supported more focused information and constrained attention to the few using them. Artefacts afforded different levels and forms of participation, feedback, control and access. The temporal aspects of AfL are the focus of the next chapter.

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PURSUING LEARNING AS COHERENT, CONNECTED AND CUMULATIVE

Exploiting Time as a Resource

In this chapter our specific aim is to show how the time teachers and students spend together can be constructed and used as a resource within and for AfL in science and technology. As we explained in Chapter 2, our sociocultural stance drew our attention to the complexity of how learning takes place over time (lessons, days, weeks, months and years) and contexts (small groups, whole class, in and out of school). This then provided a basis for our developing a more nuanced understanding of the role of time as a social construct in teaching and learning. In this chapter we illustrate some of the positive ways our teachers used time as a resource to help students appreciate the overtime and over space and contexts dimensions of learning so that they experienced their learning as cumulative, connected and coherent.
WHY A FOCUS ON TIME?

In the primary classroom, even though teachers and students generally spend the day together it cannot be assumed that students will experience their learning as coherent, connected or cumulative. Learning as a coherent, connected and cumulative activity needs, to be pursued actively as pedagogic goals, through the use of appropriate teaching strategies (Mercer, 2008, p. 35). Students need help to see and build connections between people, ideas, and resources within and beyond any immediate interaction. In thinking about the practical implications of the challenges to building connections we were drawn to Janet Maybins (1994, as cited in Mercer, 1995) notion that any particular classroom interaction is part of a long conversation. This phrase appealed to our teachers and served to remind us that, all conversations have a history and a future and take place between particular people in a specific place and time (Mercer, 1995, p. 30). Mercer (2008) lists several teaching strategies that can be used to draw students into a shared, cumulative and progressive conversation about and understanding of the activities in which they are engaged (see also Gee & Green, 1998; Mercer, Dawes & Staarman, 2009). These strategies include recaps, or summaries of what teachers consider to be the most pertinent features of a past event for the current activity, elicitations to activate students recall about past events, and marking past shared experiences as significant and relevant by using we statements. These strategies serve to develop what Derek Edwards and Neil Mercer (1987) described as common knowledge, or shared understandings between teachers and students and amongst students. Common knowledge is an important classroom
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resource that, when activated, can provide a shared contextual frame of reference for interaction and meaning making thereby highlighting the continuities of educational experience. Phil Scott and his colleagues (Scott, Mortimer & Ametller, 2011) propose pedagogical link making as a key aspect of teaching and learning scientific conceptual knowledge and other forms of disciplinary subject matter. Both teachers and students must be engaged with the linkmaking process: the teacher to make the link available and the students as actively making connections. They make it clear that if link making is not addressed through teaching, then it is unlikely to emerge in students learning. Phil Scott, Eduardo Mortimer and Orlando Aguiar (2006) emphasise the over time nature of science learning, which entails students moving from their existing everyday ideas towards a more scientific point of view. They highlight that it is essential that students understand how a specific teaching task and idea fits within and contributes to their learning in the longer term and across the whole sequence of tasks. They usefully describe learning as an iterative process of moving backwards and forwards through time, trying to make sense of the episodes as a linked chain of interactions. (p. 26). Likewise in technology Richard Kimbell and his colleagues (Kimbell, Stables & Green, 1996) emphasise that teachers need to help students build connections between designing, making and testing. To transform their ideas into working realities, students need to work iteratively over time, to reflect on their ideas and progress, to work in the moment and to project ahead. When students undertake designing without thought to the whole process being linked and interconnected, they find it difficult to see the purpose of each activity. When they pursue activities as standalone, they may, for example, tidy up portfolios of work after the event and not base their designs on any prior research. Hence, how teachers structure lessons and support students to make links between ideas, tasks and lessons strongly affects whether students are able to undertake technological processes in a coherent manner over time. Along with a concern for how moments add up to localised ways of being a successful learner (Moss, 2008), a sociocultural approach alerts us to building coherence and continuity beyond the classroom (Haneda, 2009; Lemke, 2000b). Neither science nor technology education research have extensively investigated science and technology from the experiences of students who spend most of every day, before and after science and technology lessons, in other subject areas, in social interactions in school but outside the curriculum, and in life outside school. Having exciting experiences with science and technology is valid and valuable in itself, but each experience must somehow play a part in still larger experiences on longer time scales. Students experiences outside the classroom also influence their classroom curriculum learning. We can promote and support longerterm intellectual and personal development when teachers ensure greater continuity in students ways of experiencing as they move from one subject to another, from one day to another, and from in and out of school. Much of the emphasis in AfL has been on its timing as an assessment that occurs during, and not at the end of, teaching and learning activities. Teacher feedback on the task or idea at hand is central to effective AfL but this feedback is usually
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informed and framed by teacher longerterm goals for student learning. Teachers, and students, can and do accumulate and use information on student learning over lessons, days and weeks (Leahy, et. al., 2005), especially when they are in pursuit of longer term and complex learning goals. Teachers have more than responsibilities to individuals; they are also responsible for the learning progress of students as a class. One way for teachers to achieve this is for them to regularly sum up individual and collective student progress. In the sections that follow we lay out some of the positive ways our teachers used time as a resource to provide multiple opportunities for students to experience, develop and access feedback on ideas and practices over time. Our teachers worked to establish and sustain a sense of connection, continuity, and coherence in student learning experiences. This process began with their planning, where they deliberately prepared and developed a series of nested and linked tasks (see Chapter 4). It was also evident in their responsiveness to occasions when they could progress the development of student learning outside dedicated science and technology lessons. It was further evident in their talk about the connections between ideas, tasks, and lessons, their deliberate use of routines and material artefacts to link tasks, ideas, and lessons and their summing up of student/class progress as part of making adjustments to their teaching.
PLANNING FOR AND RESPONDING TO STUDENT LEARNING AS CONNECTED AND CUMULATIVE

Teacher conceptualisation and sequencing learning tasks is an important influence on how interactions unfold within a lesson and over time and how students pursue coherent knowledge and purposeful understanding. As we noted in Chapter 2, a high organisation based on ideas has been found to support students in become autonomous learners. Our InSiTE teachers planning, which focused on developing teaching sequences of nested and linked tasks, as detailed in Chapter 4, ensured that they were clear about the pedagogic links between ideas, tasks, and lessons they would attend to with their students. As was illustrated in the extended examples in Chapter 5, a benefit from planning in this way was that the teachers could make decisions in the moment and respond flexibly to student ideas and practices while still maintaining the integrity of their longterm goals for student learning. Teachers had the confidence, and their preparation allowed them, to explore alternative pathways with their students when student learning stalled. Paraphrasing the words of Gaea Leinhardt and Michael Steele (2005, p. 89), they were able to create a coherent and thorough exploration of the science and technology at hand, and at the same time keep the class on a bounded intellectual journey. Teachers need to plan for and organise time for both the provision of feedback and for students to make sense of and use the feedback. Our primary teachers control over the scheduling of the school day and the duration of their science and technology units was important in them being able to respond flexibly to student ideas. They were free to allocate sufficient time for the exploration of science and technology and could alter time periods if necessary.
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For example, they could carry on longer with a particular lesson if they decided this was required. Though there were broad time allocations for particular curriculum areas set by individual schools for their teachers, teachers were relatively unrestricted in deciding how long a science or technology unit might take, or how long each lesson in a unit might take. For instance, in technology, when students came to making their product, teachers often suspended the timetable for an entire morning, afternoon, or day to ensure students had sufficient time to complete the making, testing and modification process. The fact that teachers were responsible for student learning across the curriculum also contributed to the breadth of options they had for picking up and pursuing student ideas and interests over time and for helping their students experience learning as cumulative and coherent. For example, all our teachers incorporated nonfiction and fiction books about the current class science and technology topic into their reading programmes. In the following extensive example, we show how Jane made links for her Year 1 students between her science unit and a mathematics activity, and between science, physical education and drama. We first outline Janes planned sequence of tasks for engaging her students with the ideas of solid and liquid (see Table 7.1). You will note that the task on May 31st is italicised; we explain why below. Jane has planned for students to make vanilla biscuits and to undertake a biscuit ingredient sort on May 30th. Jane explained to us that she selected the making of
Table 7.1. Janes sequence of tasks Date 30 May (Science) Tasks and activities Make vanilla biscuits as part of a science focus on solids, liquids and mixtures. Science task to sort small samples of biscuit ingredients. Guided observation of a whole and broken egg as part of biscuit making. Guided observation of melting butter for biscuits. A maths sortstudent sorted a selection of items into solid/liquid groups. Reviewing photographs in a floor book of yesterdays tasks and discussing again which was solid and which was liquid and why Observing peaches and peach juice in fruit salad as an aside to making a fruit salad mixture and questioning to prompt students to identify, and justify, which were solid/liquid. A picture sort of foods into solid/liquid/mixture prior to making a class posterboth requiring reasons for placement. Students choreograph and perform a mixture dance at a school assembly. Different groups take on being solids and liquids and the mixing of the two

30 May (Science) 30 May (Science) 30 May (Maths) 31 May (Science) 31 May (Science)

1 June (Science) 8 June (Dance)

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vanilla biscuits because V was the letter of the day in her reading programme (thus making a connection between reading and science lessons) and also because not many of her students knew what vanilla was. She also deliberately used a recipe that included an egg because she expected this to promote student debate around wet/dry ingredients and solid/liquid during the ingredients sort (Chapter 6 describes the students debate). Her inclusion of an egg was to help explore the ambiguity in student categorisation (a solid shell and liquid contents). When the students undertook the sorting task, two groups produced two distinct categories, with the egg straddling them, indicating that they understood the ambiguity of the eggs classification. Janes next planned task of a guided observation of a whole and broken egg further explored liquid/solid and confirmed, or not, students earlier categorisation. Her final planned activity, a guided observation of melting butter for biscuits, was used to help students consider the difference in properties with a change from solid to liquid. In the afternoon of the 30th, when Janes students were involved with mathematics, she also set up a corresponding sorting and classifying task, thus helping students make links between science and mathematics over time. As the students were doing this planned maths task, Jane noticed that the students were not able to explain the concepts of wet/dry, solid/liquid, even though they could do the physical sort. During the evening of May 30th, she compiled the first pages of a large floor book, How can we change food? depicting key events and ideas from the three science activities of the 30th. The book included photographs taken on the 30th and student work related to the activities they had undertaken. On the 31st Jane had the students in a class group on the mat and she produced the floor book. She used the annotated photographs and student work to recap ideas and carefully question the students to help them better understand and explain the differences between solid and liquid. This was an unplanned task (italicised in Table 7.1) but Jane now included it because of the student difficulties she had noticed in the mathematics sort on the 30th. Jane used the floor book as a memory prompt to stimulate discussion and to foster connections between subjects (science to mathematics to science) and over a longer time frame of days (30th to 31st). The class discussion around the ideas in the floor book served as an opportunity for students to revisit and explain their ideas and also for the students to hear each others ideas. Student explanations, along with who was prepared to explain, provided Jane with an insight into student learning. As well, students who had been absent the previous day were an authentic audience for this recap. Jane commented: It is not easy for the children to make explanations (partly because it is a difficult concept) but also because [I think] they have not had a lot of experiences with making explanations and also it is a developmental stage. After the recap to develop ideas, Jane used the planned task of making fruit salad on the 31st as another opportunity to discuss solid/liquid. The next day, the 1st, she had her students sort pictures of food into solid and liquid prior to making a poster. A week later on the 8th the students discussed the properties of solids and liquids as they collaborated to choreograph a dance to show their understandings of mixture. There was a cumulative, cohesive quality to the tasks.
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Through this planned sequence of tasks, and Janes added extra task to explore student difficulties with science explanations, she provided students with multiple opportunities and contexts to build and express their ideas about solid and liquids. Janes students had time to act on feedback and build concepts of solid, liquid and mixtures. Because Jane had allday contact with her students, she was able to alter her planned tasks in science in response to their learning in mathematics, to layer up and overlap student learning. She was able to connect different subjects (science, mathematics, drama) to help students experience learning as connected. Referencing knowledge over different curriculum areas provided students with a longer time for thinking about ideas. Each connected experience played a part in building coherency over a longer time scale. This example demonstrates that when teachers plan for connectedness, continuity and coherency, they can change their programme to respond flexibly to student ideas and practices while still maintaining the integrity of their longerterm learning goals. In Neil Mercer and Karen Littletons (2007) words, this example shows how from a students perspective, school work should ideally have a cohesive, cumulative quality in which specific activities and their goals can be seen to form part of a greater whole, as part of a purposeful educational journey (p. 114).
TALK TO DEVELOP CONTINUITY, CONNECTIONS AND COHERENCE OVER TIME

Talk is one of the key means that teachers can use to help students appreciate how ideas, tasks and lessons are linked over a period of time. We found the construct of metatalk useful for understanding how our teachers used talk to help their students experience tasks as making a cumulative contribution to their learning about particular ideas and practices. Gaea Leinhardt and Michael Steele (2005) introduce the notion of metatalk to explain and understand talk that supports student metacognitive functioning in the classroom. They describe it as talk that organizes, foreshadows, summarizes, or connects classroom activities and content to keep track of the multilayered nature of classroom activity and work (p. 92). Metatalk served intellectual and social functions and was central to smoothing out intellectual and social transitions from one activity to the next. Our teachers talking about tasks and ideas from the past, in the current, and into the future played an important part in helping students make connections between ideas, tasks and lessons. Teachers metatalk and pedagogical link making played an important role in alerting students to the relevance of their previous (shared) experiences. Through these actions, the teachers were also intent on ensuring that student knowledge building was progressive in the sense that students recognised they had developed new, and more nuanced, understandings (Bereiter, 1994). For the development of coherent learning, it is important that students prospectively prepare for what is coming up and retrospectively reflect on what has just happened (Jordan & Henderson, 1995, p. 64). Through the use of metatalk in the InSiTE classrooms, the time between lessons provided space to think over what had already happened, to deliberate on ideas that were developing, and to generate new ideas.

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One of the most common strategies teachers used to help students develop a sense of continuity and coherence across ideas, tasks and lessons was to make explicit links between lessons, tasks and ideas. Typically, they began each science and technology lesson with a plenary session using recapssummaries of what they considered to be the most salient features of a past event for the current activity (Edwards & Mercer, 1987; Mercer, 1995). Sometimes the recap gained authenticity through the need to update a student who had been away the previous day. The teachers also used questions to prompt students to recall past events (for example, Who can tell me what they found out about making a prototype in the last lesson?). They marked past shared experiences as significant and relevant in the now by using we statements, such as Remember when we made plans to make a pinhole camera? Through this practice the teachers were deliberately invoking common knowledge developed through previous tasks as a resource for current learning by highlighting the continuities in students experiences. At this time they signalled the focus for learning for the current lesson and they introduced the tasks they had planned to achieve this learning. To conclude a lesson they often held another plenary to ensure there was time to review that days work and foreshadow what might happen next. Lessons often concluded with a whole class review of what the students had done and what learning they might have achieved. This foreshadowing of the goals and tasks for the next day made explicit the links between ideas, tasks and lessons, thereby making visible the connected pathway the teachers had for student learning. Ellie used this approach to establish and maintain a sense of connection and coherency when her Year 3 and 4 students created masks for their school production. Every lesson began and finished with whole class plenary. Talk at the beginning of lessons focused on looking back at what had already been achieved and the goals, ideas and tasks for that day. Plenary sessions at the end of lessons focused on reviewing the goals, ideas and tasks undertaken that day as well as looking ahead to what might next happen. For example, at the beginning of lesson two Ellie held the following plenary session with the whole class: Ellie: Today we are going to carry on with our ideas about masks. Can you tell me about your sketching from yesterday? What does it mean? Tama: It doesnt need to be good. Paru: It is fast and quick pictures. Ellie: Ae [yes]. So what did you sketch? Tama: We sketched pictures of the mask we are going to make. Ellie: Ae, kapai [good]. You did sketches of the masks you will make, so you could decide on what materials you might make a mask of, and how they might look. Today were going to go on from there and take a look at the specifications your mask will need to have. Well talk about the specifications now. What do you think this big word might mean?

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Ellies orchestration of the class discussion first allowed students to think back and connect to the previous days lesson centred on the task of sketching. She asked them to recap their understandings of sketching and what they had sketched. Ellie also summarised the sketching task and then she reiterated the goals of sketching: to make decisions about aspects of functionality (which materials for making) and to make decisions related to aspects of form (how they might look). She then introduced the task for the day: to look at the specifications. However, she did not expect her young students to understand specifications, so she made space for a conversation about them. Using phrases like Today were going to go on from there helped her students see the connections between tasks and days. Her students were helped to see how each task was connected and how it contributed to the overall macro task (to design and make a mask for a school production). Because she encouraged her students to think ahead to next steps and to think back to what had happened and what they learned, the students were better prepared to self and peer monitor their technology ideas and progress over the five days of the unit. On a number of occasions we saw them supporting each other (see Chapter 9, where three boysHemi, Tukai and Jayhelp each other to draw flames).
SUCCESS CRITERIA AS SOURCE AND MEANS FOR DEVELOPING CONTINUITY, CONNECTIONS AND COHERENCE OVER TIME

Our teachers used success criteria as a mechanism to help students connect ideas over the course of a unit. The teachers were aware that within AfL it is recommended that students are made aware of intentions for their learning and the criteria they might use to judge the success of their learning. Also, as is often recommended, teachers introduced, negotiated and/or reminded students of relevant success criteria throughout lessons. Developing success criteria with students helped them to understand the parameters of a task. However, as we signalled in our planning framework, our teachers were very conscious of the overall main idea in science and the overall macro task in technology (see Chapter 4). Within their AfL practices, the teachers managed the interplay between the main or macro aspects and the meso and micro aspectswhat students needed to learn and do in the short term to achieve the overall goals over a longer time. In the following example Brenda used success criteria to encourage her Year 5 and 6 students to keep in mind the key variables for designing a working model of a light tower. At the conclusion of a lesson she said: Tomorrow were going to start using circuits: bulbs, batteries, and wires, so that when you build your light tower you can make sure that your bulbs will go. So tomorrow were going to start making a circuit so that you can learn that. Id like you to start thinking of a good material to build your light tower out of. Over the holidays I was thinking and I came up with coat hanger wire. You may think of something better. As I said, you might want to make it out of

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thin bits of wood, if you know how to attach those. You may want to build it out of cardboard. How could you build it out of that? We note that here she has indicated that the next day the students will learn how to make a complete circuit so that they are able to make a functional light tower. She has also signalled to the students that they need to begin thinking about appropriate materials for the construction of the tower itself. In this way she has foreshadowed where students will be going in order to help them experience their learning as cumulative, connected and coherent. To focus the discussion and help students organise their ideas, Brenda drew student attention to the success criteria they had negotiated for a light tower. These were recorded on the whiteboard. She asked: Brenda: Now, how big is it going to be? Look at the success criteria, how big is it going to be? Keanu: 2535 cm. Brenda: Thats right. So you have to think of a material Keanu that you can make it out of that would fit that. Okay. Now we did choose that height because, look at our stage, our stage is about 30 cm [she measures again]. So your light tower has to be between that height and that height [she points to height criteria written up on board]. She has reminded the students that the material they will use must meet the requirements of the success criteria the class had already negotiated. Here we see her link to the future. The use of success criteria helped her students connect their ideas, tasks and lessons in a coherent manner as the success criteria were constantly present and were used as anchors to return to. They became an ongoing point of reference and therefore provided coherency for the students design decisionmaking process. In the next example we illustrate how one of our teachers negotiated with her students and then used success criteria as a way of keeping them focused on the overall goals of a technology macro task. Technology units usually require students to learn a range of distinct skills and ideas and then bring these together in order to accomplish the unit macro task. For example, Gail devised a series of tasks for her Year 3 and 4 students to develop success criteria for the macro task of creating a tong. The meso tasks included assisting students to develop a shared understanding or common knowledge of tongs by identifying and investigating a range of tools that were tongs and developing a vocabulary of tool names and tool actions (see Chapter 6). Gail recorded the criteria her students developed for tongness on a whiteboard. Overnight she rewrote the criteria onto a poster, which she placed in a prominent position on the classroom wall to be used as a ready reference for the remainder of the unit. Subsequently, Gail referred the students to the success criteria in response to questions about the form and function of the tongs they were designing and making. The students also referred to the criteria independently of Gail as part of

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a process of checking their designs. They used them when critiquing each others work and providing feedback. The criteria acted as a touchstone that was a source of continuity and coherence for students as they worked on creating their tongs over a number of tasks and lessons. This example also illustrates the role that common knowledge can play in the use of criteria within AfL. The criteria were derived from the students guided examination of actual tongs. Gail was able to use her knowledge that all her students had seen the same selection of tongs and knew something of their function as a resource in subsequent lessons. She deliberately cued this collective knowledge in discussions with individuals and the class about how well their own tong matched the agreed criteria. This strategy of building common knowledge (Edwards & Mercer, 1987) was used at one time by all our teachers, which they could then draw on to extend student thinking. It was one way to accommodate the diversity of student backgrounds in the class. The use of success criteria gained authenticity in technology lessons because they also constituted the product specifications for students designing and making.
ARTEFACTS TO DEVELOP CONTINUITY AND CONNECTION

In line with our focus on meaning making and communication as multimodal, we now illustrate the use of artefacts to help students keep track of the multilayered nature of classroom activity and the multidimensional nature of science and technology (Moreland & Cowie, 2007). Our teachers also used artefacts in conjunction with and to augment talk to generate a sense of continuity and connection over a series of lessons and between tasks and ideas. On a short time scale, such as within a lesson, the teachers use of material artefacts supported students making connections and maintaining focus on particular ideas and tasks when they moved from small group to whole class tasks. For example, when Lois assigned her Year 1 to 4 students the task of answering the question, Where are fossils found? she handed out a thought bubble worksheet for the students to use. They took this to their group table to complete (Figure 7.1).

Figure 7.1. Students using thought bubble.

Once completed, students brought the worksheet back to the whole class discussion (Figure 7.2). Lois held these up and talked about what the students had recorded on the fossil bubbles (Figure 7.3). They repeated this process with three other questions.

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Figure 7.2. Sharing thought bubble information.

Figure 7.3. Discussing ideas on thought bubbles.

The bubbles provided a visible connection between the initial introduction of the task, the small group work and the whole class review of student ideas. To help students see that learning is realised over time, some of our teachers also documented student work and thinking in floor books that they designed and produced. These books served as an evolving record of student work and thinking. These teachers usually began a lesson with plenary where a shared reading of the book was undertaken as a reminder of what had happened previously. For example, Jane made a floor book on her Year 1 students designing and making kites by including photographs and text illustrating what her students had done and said from one day to the next (Figures 7.4 and 7.5).

Figure 7.4 and Figure 7.5. Janes floor book.

The photographs, text and diagrams illustrated the main events and learning milestones for each day. The photographs almost always included students actively engaged in tasks. Jane read the page pertaining to the previous days activities at the beginning of that days lesson. She also questioned the students about it to help them recap. At the same time she indicated the linkages to the current days work. The connections this process promulgated were evident in the students talk about the ideas and events from the different days within the unit. The book provided an evolving record of the ideas and tasks of the unit as a whole. The students continued to read the book after the unit had finished, indicating the value they accorded it.

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Our teachers also often set aside wall space for the public display of student work as another permanent strategy for helping students see that learning happened over time. The teachers of younger students were usually the curators of the display and updated it from one day to the next. In this cumulative manner the wall display provided an evolving record of tasks and student thinking about a topic. The following photographs (Figures 7.6 to 7.8) depict the evolution of the wall display in Lois Year 1 to 4 class that were associated with a sequence of technology lessons on designing a kite. Figure 7.6 shows the wall display on day two of the unit and students group brainstorms about kites and their characteristics. Figure 7.7 was taken several days later after students had made kites from a blueprint and had assessed the kites capabilities. Figure 7.8 was taken at the completion of the unit and it shows all the ideas and information accumulated over the duration of the unit. Though a static display, displays of this sort expanded the time students devoted to thinking about the ideas and practices their teacher intended them to learn because students often spent time viewing and talking with peers about what was displayed. Students often brought family members into their class and talked to them about the current wall display, again expanding the time spent on the current science or technology unit.

Figure 7.6. Wall display Day 1.

Figure 7.7. Wall display Day 3.

Figure 7.8. Wall display Day 5.

In AfL, feedback only becomes effective if students are given time to act on that feedback. The duration of feedback time may need to be longer than the now and today. The following is an example of an individual benefitting from experiencing learning as connected and cumulative. When Ellies Year 3 and 4 students were creating masks, Maia began by choosing string for his masks strap. While he was designing, he pondered whether the string would stay tight. The following day when discussing their plans of action for making their masks, Maia had replaced string with harakeke (flax). Ellie asked him why he had changed his strap material. Maia replied, because it is more stretchy than string and it will fit better. Perhaps his family at home had suggested harakeke to him, or maybe the idea came to him overnight. No matter the reason, it was the overnight that was important here. But then, on the day after deciding on a harakeke strap, when Maia came to make his
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mask using harakeke gathered from plants growing in the school grounds, it was raining. This meant he could not use harakeke, as harvesting in the rain is against traditional M ori practice. Elastic had been introduced to the class as suitable strap material the previous day and was being freely used by several students. Ellie asked Maia what he was going to do now to make his strap: Maia: Ill use elastic now. Ellie: Tino pai [very good]. Why elastic? Maia: It will be very stretchy and it will fit good. Ellie: Ae [Yes]. This example shows how Maia used the time between days and lessons to think about making his mask fit tightly; he had first changed his mind from string to harakeke, then weather circumstances required him to change again on making day. Elastic was a viable alternative: it met the criteria of stretchiness for a good fit. The overdays scenario helped him to selfassess by reflecting on his ideas and reconsidering his understandings of stretchiness and a good fit. A pause for thought aspect and the iterative nature of the design process gave Maia time to act on feedback. A science example showing how artefacts were used to help students pursue learning as connected, coherent and cumulative was introduced in Chapter 6 where Carols Year 7 students learned about adaptation in the context of the rocky shore. Her repeated use a zonal descriptors worksheet and an animals in the appropriate rocky shore tidal zones worksheet, before and after a visit to the rocky shore, helped her students review their ideas over time. She drew her students into shared, cumulative and progressive conversations where they actively made connections to their ideas before and after the visit. The students had time to act on the understandings they gained from their observations in the field. Caitlin, one of the students, commented that: we changed the zones where we put some animals when we looked at our cross-section again because we actually saw where they lived when we went on camp. Each connected experience played a part in building knowledge and understandings of adaptation over a longer timescale. Teachers strategic use of artefacts helped students realise learning over time. They were used to provide a sense of continuity and connection between ideas, tasks, and lessons, and took advantage of their material nature. These linking artefacts helped students experience their lessons as cumulative, continuous and coherent. In this way they were in a better position to build on what they knew and monitor their own learning. These cumulative experiences provided a rich basis for teachers to draw on for feedback.
RESPONDING TO STUDENT LEARNING OVER TIME

When the InSiTE teachers noticed students had encountered substantial barriers and/ or held significant alternative conceptual they responded over time in ways intended to address the problem. This enhanced the chance different students would access
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feedback in a form and at a time they found accessible and actionable. A striking example of the value of this practice occurred when Jenny found her Year 4 and 5 students were not convinced that humans could be categorised as animals. Many of her students sorted a picture of a person into the animal category as part of an animal/plant classification. However, Jenny speculated that some of them might simply be doing and parroting what she expected. She recalled seeing the odd one out game on Sesame Street and decided to adapt it for use in her classroom. She introduced it because it required students to explain and justify their ideas to others and therefore interrogate the difference between their everyday and science reasoning. Rather than asking the students to play the game in small groups she orchestrated the game as a whole class activity played using pictures velcroed on the classroom wallboard. To play the game students had to explain why one of the four selected items did not fit with the other three in a group. As the students learned about more classifications they were able to add in more oddoneout categories (Figures 7.97.10).

Figure 7.9. Not living/Living.

Figure 7.10. Plants/Animals.

Even further into the unit the students classified animals according to their special features. The activity of classifying new items in their categories on the display wall each day became very popular with students. Jenny took advantage of the appeal of games. We can see in Figure 7.11 how eager the students are to play the game by some of them sitting up ramrod straight in the hope of being the next one picked. They wanted to be chosen to show that they knew which was the odd one out and why. By positioning the game in a public space (the wall display), Jenny helped keep ideas discussable by more students than those actually playing the game. Student enthusiasm for the game was also shown by how they scrutinised the nominated players classifications and their subsequent zealous affirmation or disagreement. This classification game became so popular that students would come in the morning and reread the information on the wall display so that they were later able to play the game and justify their choices. Students also played this game with each other before and after school, independently of Jenny, expanding the time they spent on science. It was then relatively easy for Jenny to assess who had a sustained interest in the classification ideas. Because students played the game in their free time, unassisted by Jenny,

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Figure 7.11. Oddoneout game.

there were many opportunities for them to control their learning. The playing of the oddoneout game on the wall display became an interactive means for students to realise their learning over time. Student response to the game provided evidence they had benefitted from experiencing their learning as connected and cumulative.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS

The quality of students learning experience is significantly affected by the extent to which their interactions with the teacher gives what they are doing in class a continuity of meaning and a comprehensible and worthwhile purpose (Mercer, 2008). Students often need help to appreciate the connections between what they did last time, what they are doing now, and the goals they are pursuing (Mercer, 1995, p. 71). Science and technology comprise distinct bodies of knowledge and practice that have been tried and tested over time, albeit that they are both continually evolving. From a student perspective, science and technology can often be experienced as a series of incoherent and fragmented activities. Teachers need to purposefully work towards helping students build coherent knowledge and purposeful understanding as these do not logically emerge and develop for students just because they are immersed in the same class with the same teacher over a period of time. When we view learning as a longterm activity, it is not enough for students to understand individual task or lesson goals; it is important that teachers help them appreciate how these might come together to form a whole that is more than the sum of the parts. AfL practices can contribute to students experiencing learning as cumulative and coherent. In this chapter we have highlighted the ways the InSiTE teachers used AfL strategies to provide a sense of continuity and coherence between and across ideas, tasks and lessons. Given teachers usually scheduled a series of lessons in science and technology over a period of days, students needed their support to develop connections. Teachers forethought when planning helped them think about how they were going to develop connections, continuity and coherency in the classroom. They used metatalk, success criteria and artefacts to build a platform for continuity in the

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development of ideas and skills as part of deepening thinking and expanding student opportunities to learn. Student experience of their classroom learning as cumulative was supported through teachers articulating the ways micro and meso ideas and tasks fed into the macro idea and macro task. Students making connections was supported by teachers talking about the links and connections between ideas, tasks and lessons. Metatalk strategies included summarising, foreshadowing, recapping and reviewing throughout and across lessons. Teachers actively sought to build common knowledge and used success criteria to help students experience their learning as coherent. They were also alert to opportunities across curriculum areas for helping students make broader links over time in different contexts. Often research focuses on teacher talk as a means to promote student learning, but we have argued for a concurrent focus on utilising time as a productive resource in teaching, learning and assessment. In chapter 8 we turn to the fostering of student learning agency and autonomy.

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FOSTERING STUDENT LEARNING AGENCY AND AUTONOMY

In this chapter we focus more directly on how AfL practices can provide opportunities for students to develop identities as capable and independent learners who are aware of and able to employ the accountability systems for knowledge generation and legitimation in a discipline. To do this we step back to consider how the classroom culture for learning provides opportunities for students to exercise agency and authority. Specifically, we illustrate how the InSiTE teachers fostered student learning and learning autonomy through patterns of participation that construed learning as a social practice and shared responsibility. We detail the ways the teachers sought to ensure students had access to a range of opportunities for feedback and to manage the distribution of authority in ways that supported student affiliation with science/ technology. The reader will have already encountered some of the telling examples we use to illustrate these ideas. This is deliberate. We have revisited examples from earlier chapters as a way of creating a sense of continuity and connection for readers. Revisiting also highlights the extent to which different aspects of AfL overlap and merge to contribute to individual and collective student learning capacity, agency and affiliation with science and technology. The chapter features student commentary on their learning and the learning process. Throughout the examples we consider what it is about science and technology classrooms that can provide a productive context for students to exercise agency within a system of accountabilities.
WHAT IS INVOLVED WITH STUDENT LEARNING AGENCY AND AUTONOMY?

Royce Sadler (1989) has argued that the indispensible conditions for improvement are that students move from being consumers to active participants in their own learning and assessment. Put another way, students need to move from being the recipients of feedback to someone who takes an active role in monitoring and progressing their own learning. As Margaret Carr (2001) explains it, learner agency of this kind involves students being ready, willing and able to monitor and progress their own learning. As autonomous and agentic learners students are attuned to opportunities to learn, to making deeper sense of their own learning and they knowing when and how to take strategic action to progress their learning. They have what Guy Claxton (1995) has evocatively described as a nose for quality along with the means and inclination to pursue this. As Kathryn Ecclestone (2004) reminds us, autonomy is both a goal and a set of processes for realising that goal.

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The exercise of student learning autonomy is not an individual student trait but is situated within and by a particular classroom community. The knowledge, skills and expertise associated with the role of an autonomous learner are enacted and given legitimacy within the culture of a particular classroom and, we argue, the disciplinary focus of that classroom. An important function of Af L is to make more explicit the processes a disciplinary expert might use to generate, legitimate and communicate the quality of their knowledge/learning. It can help students to appreciate what it means to act, think and value like, in our case, a scientist/technologist (Gee, 2008). Seen this way, autonomy and agency are embedded in and accomplished through the interaction between the opportunities a student has to participate and the ways they take up these opportunities. It encompasses a students capacity to monitor and guide his or her own learning progress and participation using the resources (people, ideas, things) in the setting (Willis, 2011). From this perspective, AfL practices such as self- and peer-assessment provide a way that students can reflect on and evaluate their developing expertise and understanding of the practices that are valued in the classroom community of which they are part. Well-defined learning goals and criteria for quality become tools that students can use to assess and develop their expertise as learners (of science/technology). As we noted in Chapter 2, a number of scholars have shown that the spirit of AfL can be linked with teachers and students engaging in learning as a shared responsibility. When AfL is viewed as a social process, and a joint teacher-student responsibility, both teachers and students expect to learn. Students expect to learn about their learning progress and where to next and teachers expect to learn about the sense students are making of teaching tasks with the aim of adapting them to better meet student needs. Teachers and students recognise that they are accountable for responding to, and further developing, what others say and do (Engle & Conant, 2002). They understand that such accountability involves more that the affirmation of others views; it requires consideration of their ideas and responding with the intention of helping others to move their learning forward. This learning dynamic relies very much on a classroom climate of the mutual trust and respect (Cowie, 2005; OECD, 2005). When this is in place students understand their ideas will be given careful consideration, even if they prove less than fruitful in the longer term, and so they feel safe in disclosing what is on the edges of their understanding. John Pryor and Barbara Crossouard (2010) have highlighted that the rules of the game of a classroom are very much in play in any enactment of AfL. They point out that different students are differently positioned with respect to such rules and propose that being attuned to the social practices of the classroom is crucial to their productive engagement. For this reason they advocate attention to a metasocial element of a classroom. Jill Willis (2011) makes a similar point. She argues that for students to take up autonomous ways of working that are valued by teachers they first need to find affiliation with the learning goals and negotiate an identity as a learner who belongs within and understands the classroom practices and relationships (p. 401). In this chapter we discuss the rules of the game as the

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routines and patterns of participation that teachers and students develop together and that then constrain and enable how students exercise agency over learning. These rules are integral to whether, and how, the classroom culture is for learning and whether, or not, students perceive themselves as valued contributors to collective meaning making. In the classroom a teachers authority over students and knowledge flows from the apparent disparity between teacher personnel knowledge and that of their students. It also derives in part from their institutional position. Both of these factors hold the prospect that teacher actions will realise their authority as beyond question, but classroom studies paint a more complex picture. Randi Engle and Faith Conant (2002) found that in science classrooms where students participate with productive disciplinary engagement they are encouraged to take on intellectual problems, they are given authority in addressing such problems, they are held accountable to others and to disciplinary norms, and they are provided with sufficient resources to do these things. The patterns of authority and accountability that are developed contribute to student opportunities to monitor and manage their own progress. Linking these aspects to classroom norms, James Greeno (2006) points out that when students are positioned as both authoritative and accountable there is an entitlement and expectation that they will be able to move to access resources and have the authority to use, adapt, and combine these resources. In his terms the exercise of conceptual agency involves students expecting and being able to treat the concepts, methods, and information of the domain [or discipline] as resources that can be adapted, evaluated, questioned, and modified (p. 539). To do this with integrity and influence within, and beyond, the classroom students need experience with authoritative and accountable patterns of responsibility. Specifically, they need to know and experience how the different disciplines develop and legitimate knowledge. Science and technology have particular ways of developing and legitimating knowledge and for holding people to account in the generation and legitimation of new knowledge and practices. Charles Anderson (2007) provides a useful synthesis of what these means when he describes what is involved in scientific literacy. He proposes that scientific literacy involves a sense of empowerment or agency in two senses: social and material. He defines social agency as learners being able to gain respect for their knowledge and skill and enable them to do useful work. Material agency, or agency in the material world, refers to the notion that successful learners of science can describe and measure the world around them with precision, predict and explain phenomena and act effectively to influence natural and technological systems. Michael Ford and Ellice Forman (2006) remind us that it is the interaction of the material and the social, the marshalling of evidence and the subsequent representation of nature in scientific arguments that are convincing, that is the source of authority in science (see also Duschl, 2008). Conviction in technology comes more from a demonstration of the congruence of form and function. Technology, from an educational perspective, is about enabling learners to have the confidence, competence and motivation to choose to be the person to take on the design and

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technology challenge and to do effective and appropriate things to address that challenge (Kimbell & Stables, 2008, p. 21 bold in original). In this chapter we focus on the roles social-material aspects of science and technology play in supporting student agency and resourcefulness and at the same time holding students accountable to the norms of these disciplines.
PATTERNS OF PARTICIPATION FOR LEARNING AS A SOCIAL AND SHARED RESPONSIBILITY

Classroom routines and the patterns of participation/interaction that students and teachers develop together over time shape and frame the extent to which learning is experienced as a social practice for which all class members share a responsibility. When they embody norms of respect they can be a source of security and hence support students to take risks in the pursuit of deeper understanding. When the InSiTE teachers construed learning as a shared and joint responsibility they provided an essential ground for the enactment of learning as a social process and active student engagement with learning through participation. Routines and Frequently used Task Structures Constructing Learning as a Social Process From the beginning of each year our InSiTE teachers deliberately set out to establish routines that supported learning as a social process. The routines they sought to develop included when and how students could enter a whole class discussion, the expectation that they would listen to and respect each others ideas, how to work together in a small group to conduct a brainstorm, how to report back from group work, and when and how to access resources. These routines established the classroom as a learning environment in which students were expected, entitled and obligated to work together to support each others learning (Gresalfi, et. al., 2009). In general, although not always, these routines assisted students to maintain a focus on learning while they were working on a task and when they were making the transition from whole class to small group/individual work and back again. As described in Chapter 5 in the example of Lois and her Year 1 to 4 students working on the science topic of kiwi, we saw how she wove together several tasks to provide students with multiple opportunities to make and communicate meaning. This weaving was only possible because the class already had established ways of working as individuals, small groups and a whole class. The students moved readily and willingly between whole class and collaborative tasks. They completed four activities: a progressive disclosure of the kiwi photograph as a class, a small group brainstorm, a whole class pooling of ideas and an individual drawing of a kiwi, in around 30 minutes. Lois used familiar classroom routines and task structures to advance the transition from one activity to the next and to help students remain focused on the learning goals of each new task. The students were experienced in conducting brainstorms where a nominated leader, usually an older student, acted as a coordinator

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and a writer, but everyone was expected to contribute with everyones ideas being treated with respect. The whole class pooling of group ideas, where students only contributed science ideas not already given was already familiar to the class, as was practice of checking with fellow group members to be sure that an idea was new before making a contribution. All this meant that there was no need to negotiate social arrangements or worry about whether teacher and peer reactions would be dismissive. Therefore, the continuity of focus on science, and in particular the features and characteristics of kiwi, was preserved. The influence of class routines and established patterns for participation/interaction were particularly apparent in student talk in the absence of the teacher. It cannot be assumed that students will talk about the topic under consideration when they are working away from the scrutiny of a teacher. However, on many occasions, we noted that when teachers had established a classroom culture focused on the exchange and exploration of ideas, students often engaged in cumulative exploratory talk in the absence of the teacher. This was the case in another example from Lois and her Year 1 to 4 students where the unit topic was fossils (see Chapter 7); in fact, we were struck by the way her students engaged with each others ideas. While the students were drawing and colouring their depiction of a pterodactyl dinosaur, they were freely talking together. One group of students discussed whether the pterodactyl had wings or blades and whether it could fly, before branching out through a free association of ideas. Colin: Really high. Pterodactyls can fly, but not too [far]. Olly: Balloons can. They explode [pointing his arm upwards.] Dianna: Yes, sometimes. Once I had this book. Once this baby had this balloon that flies up. It flew up in the sky. [Here the student is referring to a book in the class library] It could land on the moon if its not hot. Colin: Did you know the moon has holes? Its just its light, so you cant see them. Olly: Yeah its just so high up [points up with his arm again.] There are no clouds. Dianna: There are! Colin: Yes, its because of the sun and the clouds that you cant see holes. Dianna: Shooting stars go around and behind the clouds. Colin: Shooting stars go up and down. Dianna: Once I saw a shooting star. Mary: [From the neighbouring table] You cant get shooting stars in New Zealand. Colin: Yes, you can. Olly: [Turns around] You can get them anywhere, Mary.

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In Lois classroom the students were very comfortable with sharing and considering each others ideas, even when Lois was out of earshot. In this sequence each student made a contribution and their contributions linked with each other, so the talk had a cumulative aspect. At the same time, students challenged each other, as with Marys contention about the absence of shooting stars in New Zealand. Initially, only students from the one table contributed, but towards the end of the sequence, students from a neighbouring table also contributed. Here, while their talk was not directly related to fossils or to dinosaurs, they were talking about sciencerelated ideas and not, for instance, weekend activities. We agree with Joshua Danish and David Phelps (2011) when they point out that sustained convivial small talk, even when off the topic, can help build the trust and respect students need to feel comfortable to share their tentative ideas and to provide feedback on each others work. Recognising and Crediting Student Ideas and Suggestions The InSiTE teachers accorded value and credited students with ideas by recording their names beside the ideas they offered in group and class discussion. This strategy provided an enduring record of what was said and by whom. When these records were then displayed on the classroom wall they helped everyone to build a picture of what had been contributed and could be used for ongoing reference. For instance, we noticed students using these records as a word source. They helped teachers and students remember past conversations and to reflect on the experiences they shared. For example, as Gails Year 3 and 4 students contributed ideas during whole class conversations, she recorded all the ideas and the name of the contributor (Figure 8.1). This technique positioned students as contributors of ideas that were worthy of collective consideration. It was important in establishing a classroom culture that construed learning as a social process within which individual student ideas and suggestions were a valuable resource for progressing learning. In Gails case this technique also fed into her summative reporting on student learning. After class she transferred what was recorded on the whiteboard to her computer so that she had a permanent record of

Figure 8.1. Gails recording of student contributions.

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student contributions. At the end of the teaching sequence, she analysed these recorded individual contributions to help her sum up the various students learning. In her opinion this qualitative information added an extra dimension to her summative assessment and to the schoolrequired summative assessment checklists. Teachers also displayed student work on the classroom wall as a way to accord value and credit students with having interesting and useful ideas (see Chapter 7 for the Kite wall display). Public wall displays of student work helped students see their accomplishments and progress. Being able to move around their classrooms and engage with these displays meant that students had free access to the displays, thus expanding the time they had to think about the ideas and practices they were learning. As another means to accord value and authority to students, teachers made floor books of student work over the course of a unit (see Chapter 7 for the floor book from Janes class). Photographs, text and diagrams helped students to see their engagement with learning. Shared readings of the evolving book gave value to students previous activities. These books were placed in the classroom library at the conclusion of the units. This was a strong indication to the students of the worth of their ideas. That the students viewed these books as valuable was evident in the way they continued to read the books long after the units had finished. Patterns Associated with Freedom to Move and Seek out Support and Resources As part of a classroom culture for learning students need opportunities to access and share social and material resources. Ideally, students need to be able to move freely around the classroom to access help, knowledge and resources for comparison, elaboration and inquiry (Roth, 1997; Windschitl, 2002). The InSiTE teachers and their students interacted with each other in a number of distinct ways that provided opportunities for students to take responsibility for their learning though the exercise of autonomy and agency. Routines and established patterns of participation structured student access to ideas, people and other resources. In Chapter 6 we described how Gails Year 3 and 4 students established the criteria for designing, making and testing a tong. Towards the beginning of the third lesson, Barry invented a spring to improve the functionality of the hinging mechanism in his tong. Over the course of the lesson, groups nominated representatives to visit Barrys group and find out about how and why Barry had made a spring. It was clear that the students were really taken by Barrys idea and they were keen to adopt it for themselves. They all constructed a spring of some sort. However no student, including Barry, was able to securely attach the spring to the arms of the tong. By the end of the fourth day, no group retained a spring as part of their tong solution. In our view this example is a telling illustration of the conditions for conceptual agency. The idea of a spring emerged, was judged as valuable, diffused around the class, proved too difficult for students to operationalise, and so became redundant. Throughout this process it was essential that it was acceptable for students to move about the classroom to source ideas and to know that it was not cheating to take up others ideas in pursuit of understanding and/or successful task completion.

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We spoke to students at the end of each unit and in almost every case the students discussed the value of working in groups. They expressed their appreciation of opportunities to talk about their learning and access feedback from their teacher and each other. Students used language indicative of a commitment to joint responsibility for, and shared ownership of, learning. For example, Maggie, Mike and Nicola (5 and 6 years) explained: Nicola: The teacher helped us make stuff. Mike: If youre stuck the teacher always helps you. Group work is good because the whole group got to make the food. Maggie: Yeah, it was good cos we all had to do jobs. Mike: When we are on the mat [as a class] we can think about lots of other things. The teacher is with all of us. Carols students (11 and 12 years) explained how they had worked together during a science unit on adaptation. Cath: We worked by ourselves and in groups. Group work helps you view other peoples opinions. Melanie: People in the class also helped. They help you explain first and think about what youre going to write. The teacher helps, especially if youre looking at how a particular animal is going to live. When people ask her questions she asks, Is that possible? Shelley: Ann helped me quite a lot because she sits next to me. She talked about adaptation. My teacher helped me learn. She is sometimes at the front or she comes to your desk and talks to us about our ideas. Jean: My teacher and my friends helped me learn. She [Carol] came up and helped and asked like what weve done, could you make it better? She motivates us. Student familiarity with and ability to exploit the affordances of classroom routines and patterns of participation that constitute learning as a joint responsibility, is central to their participation in learning as a social process.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF AUTHORITY AND SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE AND FEEDBACK

To be able to use what they learn beyond the moment and beyond the classroom students need to experience how different disciplines exercise authority over what counts as valued and legitimate knowledge. This means that the authority for developing and attributing worth to ideas needs to extend beyond the teacher. Teachers need to support their students to develop their individual ability to create knowledge whilst simultaneously helping them to understand and appreciate currently accepted science/technology ways of thinking (Wells, 1999). Students need to experience for themselves what it is involved in the generation

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and legitimation of knowledge, but at the same time they need to experience that not everything goes science and technology have particular ways of legitimating knowledge. In this section we look at the range of strategies the InSiTE teachers used to support the distribution of authority and sources of knowledge and expertise within the classroom and to provide students with access to multiple sources of feedback. Some of the strategies the teachers used can be found in any classroom that supports student learning autonomy. Others build more specifically on the interplay of the material and the social that characterise knowledge construction and critique in science and technology. The strategies included: Fading scaffolding to support agency and share authority; Creating opportunities to experience and understand how quality is judged; Activating peers and others as sources of information and feedback; and Seeding the environment with material resources to support student agency. Fading Scaffolding to Support Agency and to Share Authority Synonymous with effective scaffolding, teacher AfL practices do not take the task or thinking away from students, rather teachers adjust and gradually fade their support as students develop their understanding and expertise. As student learning and learning capacity grows, teachers scaffolding AfL practices gradually hands over responsibility to students. At the same time though, teachers help build student confidence and ability to push the boundaries of what they know and can do. A number of the InSiTE teachers, particularly those who taught younger students, designed task sequences within which their AfL practices acted to gradually cede authority to students. With the younger students in particular, the teachers often began a teaching sequence by modelling structured tasks. As time went by the tasks gradually became more expansive and provided more opportunities for student independence and autonomy. The following example of Jane scaffolding her Year 1 students, all aged 5 years, through a kite design and make process was one of the most powerful we saw within the InSiTE study. Jane began the first lesson of a technology unit on designing and making kites by guiding student observation and handling of a simple commercial kite. She pointed out the shape, the way the corners were reinforced, the positioning of the braces and the attachment of the flying string. She then modelled the making of a kite similar to the commercial one in conjunction with the production of an action plan. In this process she talked into meaning the link between the action plan inscription and her manipulation of the real materials, culminating in the production of a kite. The students had used a different version of the action plan template in an earlier unit when they undertook a product survey, so the action plan format and concept were not entirely new to them. Jane then had the students go through the same series of steps to produce a replica kite. Having talked with Lois, whose Year 1 to 4 students had also made kites, she had collected together a range of materials to act as struts and prepared a set of shapes in light material for the students to select from in the

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making process. Jane repeated the demonstration sequence twice more with different but simple commercial kites on two different days. On each occasion she was careful to replicate and use the technical language she had introduced in lesson one (bridle, flying string, braces and so on) and a similar sequence of steps for producing an action plan to construct these different kites. The students followed her steps and also made these two kites. This repetition served to increase the opportunities students had to make links between actions/ideas and particular words as well as to use the language themselves. The use of the action plan encouraged students to stand outside their practice and helped them to develop a more robust self conscious awareness of what was involved (Kimbell & Stables, 2008, p.223). This served to progressively empower the students in the exercise of conceptual agency. This process allowed Jane to accumulate evidence of students thinking and skills across contexts and over time. On the fourth day, the students created their own action plan and used this as a basis for their own kite. Their actions indicated that they had developed the expertise and confidence for autonomous decisionmaking. Jane was convinced that if these children had been given the task of making a kite without the scaffolding experiences, they would not have worked so confidently, creatively and successfully with designing their own kite. This example shows that even the very youngest students can make rigorous, thoughtful design decisions when they have been immersed in a context and have a welldeveloped understanding of the clients needs (Kimbell & Stables, 2008, p. 227). Creating Opportunities to Experience and Understand how Quality is Judged Student selfreview and monitoring is central to their active involvement in AfL and them being able to make informed decisions about their learning and learning progress. To help students develop a nose for quality it is usual for teachers to make explicit their expectations for student learning and the criteria students will use to judge the quality of their work. Criteria as descriptions of quality can be stated up front. They can be made explicit through description, modelling and/or exampling. They can be progressively revealed and/or negotiated over the course of a lesson or unit. When the goal is that students develop a nose for quality students need opportunities and incentives to distil common and distinguishing features across multiple experiences and contexts and link these to goals for their learning and to criteria for quality. In technology, student appreciation of the form and functional requirements of a technological product, artefact or system they are developing, is central to their beginning to understand ideas and practices in technology and to adopt a technological stance. Though students are constrained by the criteria and/or specifications of the design brief, their solutions are built on innovation. This requires students to show sensitivity to the macro task in its entirety, not simply to discrete criteria. The challenge for our teachers was to assist their students to be mindful of all the intertwined and multiple dimensions of technology practice and not be captivated by the appeal of making. In Grants technology unit on creating signs for the school, the

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students considered, for example, the match between the structural size of a sign and its purpose; the suitability of materials for outdoor use; the clarity of the lettering and icons, and the building skills needed to construct a stable structure. As a class the students worked together to identify the characteristics of signs through several activities and discussions. They examined and discussed signs in situ (they went for a neighbourhood walk), a slide presentation on signs and a number of books on signs. The consensus factors they distilled from their experiences formed the basis of their specifications for brief development and enactment. The specifications were recorded in their books for easy and ongoing reference. Because the students had collectively devised the task specifications, the specifications were an authentic and purposeful basis for judging the form and function of the signs they then designed and created. The students worked confidently and carefully as autonomous decisionmakers when creating their signs. Peers were able to provide constructive feedback because the specifications had been agreed. Figures 8.2 to 8.4 show students working to make their signs using specifications as criteria of quality.

Figures 8.2 to 8.4. Working carefully and confidently to specifications.

In AfL terms, the specifications served as the criteria and descriptions of quality for student self and peerassessment. Throughout the unit Grant encouraged the students to check their designing, mockups and final product against the specifications. Students were able to identify both successful elements and where they could make improvements in an ongoing manner throughout the entire process. For example, after making a mockup of his sign and before making the real one, David (9 years old) commented: My colours stand out and the lettering is clear but I am going to put a black arrow at the end so my sign shows direction. If you look at my mockup the direction doesnt show. I also need to think, is it [the sign] high enough? Beryl (10 years old) altered her original lettering measurements and sign measurements reasoning: one thing was that my block lettering was too small for people to see on my design, so I changed it from 56 cm high to 1517 cm high. And then when I came to

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make my sign, the wood I got for it was too small compared to my design measurements, so I had to change the measurements from 1.25 metres to 1 metre. She also commented on what had worked: the glaze is good to protect your sign and the good thing about the graphic vinyl is that this stuff sticks on longer [than painting]. Grant digitally photographed each stage of the signmaking process his students went through. Students compiled individual portfolios throughout the unit. Their portfolios included photographs of their technical drawings of joints, design drawings of the sign they planned to make, a mockup of their sign, a photograph of the final product and a photograph of the sign in its intended location. Each student completed a selfassessment of what they had learned and rated the extent to which they had met the product specifications/criteria for an effective sign. Peers also assessed and commented on the signs using the same specifications. Through the photographic, self and peerassessment processes, students were actively involved in collecting data that they could use as evidence of their learning. The students directed Grant to rephotograph if they thought that a particular photograph did not show their work as they desired. Grant also used these portfolios as a basis for his own summary assessment. As a penultimate peer assessment the class assessed all of the completed signs and decided which ones best met the specifications to fit particular locations in the school grounds. For example, a comment on JulieMays car park sign was: Your sign was a good size and shape. The colours stood out nicely. Good job. JulieMays sign was one eventually chosen for actual placement (see Chapter 6 to see her sign in situ). In this example, assessment was an ongoing process. It was part of, and a forum for, learning and its assessment as it happened. Ongoing self, peer, and teacher assessment against the criteria they devised together helped students see the task as a whole, create signs to a high standard, and make worthwhile contributions to others learning. Studentteacher negotiation and formulation of specifications reduced the need for the students to rely on Grants opinion alone. Because the students had developed the specifications from their shared direct experiences together, they developed a body of common knowledge to draw on to make meaningful judgements and provide their peers with judicious feedback. In science our teachers created a range of opportunities for students to evaluate the quality and fruitfulness of the science ideas and practices they were developing. In Carols Year 7 class this happened when her students were creating an animal and its habitat as the penultimate task in a unit on adaptation based on the rocky shore (see other aspects of this unit in chapter 6). The task required students to create and draw an animal and to write a description of how their animals adaptations allowed it to survive in the habitat they had in mind. What was striking about this task was how it afforded students agency to show their understanding through a critical, creative process. Carol knew that this task would afford her students with a rich opportunity to demonstrate and apply the knowledge they had gained over the course of the unit was put to use as they worked iteratively on a task they found compelling. Peers pressed each other to explain how an adaptation fitted with the environment as they compared and refined their sketches. Students provided feedback to each other about how well the features of their animal allowed it to live in the environment and on the clarity of their explanations. Carols asking the students to design the animal
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and describe its habitat compelled them to think carefully about the full meaning of effective adaptation as an interaction between an animal and its environment. Lynley created the Planet Herder where her animal, the Midrell, lives. She wrote this about the Planet Herder: Planet Herder is named for the people who herd animals by crying strangely. These people run out to the herding place, which is actually an island, and are never seen again. This is not surprising as there are vulclaws, cousins of vultures, that dont wait for anything except the smell of blood. There are also insects called wesps with a strange venom, which is called pesslaw, as is the disease that comes from the venom (one of our scientists caught it and had an orange rash and was sweating, though cold. She died three weeks later). These hang around the grasses of the dry country. There are two kinds of grasses that look almost exactly the same though one is sharp. There is only one river that runs to a lake in the centre of the island where the small rodents called Midrells live. Midrells like swimming and eat the blunt grasses. They live in burrows along the banks of the lake. Figure 8.5 is Lynleys annotated drawing of her Midrell.

Figure 8.5. Lynleys Midrell.

It is important here to notice that the text and the drawing together demonstrate the depth of Lynleys thinking. The specificity of her annotations, drawing and description indicate her understanding of adaptation. In interview students were able to describe how their animal had particular adaptations for its habitat: Melissa: I created the planet cranium. It is very hot because it is near to the sun. There is not much rain, but there is seawater and lots of kelp for sea creatures. Ten creatures live here, five on the land and five in the sea. The spiker fish is one that lives in the sea. Its got a long tail on the end of its body to help keep
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predators away. It also has a horn to defend itself against predators. It has a shell to protect its body, legs to escape with, and eyes to see under the water and into the night. It has teeth to chew and eat kelp. It has gills to help it breathe. It has adapted really well to its environment. You can see the spiker fish has special features to enable it to live in this habitat. John: My creature is the shxully beast, a small turtlelike thing that lives on the planet Treseo. Planet Treseo is a wasteland except for one spot located near the tip of the planet. It is the only part inhabitable by any living thing such as the shxully beast. It eats small insects and it sleeps inside its shell. It has spikes on its shell for protection. It can dig with the claws on the end of its legs. It has got razor sharp teeth for eating. It has a small egghorn to break out of its shell. You know it takes thousands and thousands of years for an animal to adapt. If it doesnt adapt it will probably become extinct. Given the students had begun the unit thinking of adaptation as making changes to address immediate needs, such as putting on a jersey when its cold, these examples indicate that they now had a more scientific understanding of adaptation. To exemplify the criteria of quality for an understanding of adaptation the students needed to be able to detail a host of adaptive features tailored to a specific environment. And they did. Activating Peers and Others as Sources of Information and Feedback Neil Mercer points out that explaining and arguing in reasonable manner, with someone whom you can treat as a social and intellectual equal is an excellent method for evaluating and revising understanding (Mercer, 1995, p. 89). When classroom routines and levels of trust and respect allow, peers can be an important source of support and feedback. Peers are usually readily accessible, so can provide timely feedback, and peers may communicate more effectively with one another than with the teacher. Peers, particularly friends who routinely sit together in class, build and share a body of experiences, language and understandings that each can use to inform their individual and collaborative efforts. Students in the InSiTE classrooms often sought advice from their peers. In Janes Year 1 class for instance, several students, once they had finished their own kite, helped out or were asked for advice. They told, showed, modelled and sometimes simply took over some stages of the kitemaking process. The following conversation developed when Ben became the teacher for Joe who had arrived late in a lesson. Researcher (R): So did anyone help you? Ben: Alan helped me a little bit. He just helped me taping it and then he did his own one. R: So that was really good, working with another person then? Ben: Hmm

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R: You also remember working on the table with the other children. Can you tell me about that? Ben: Its pretty easy because some people can help each other. R: I remember watching you helping who was it again? Ben: Joe! R: Yes you helped Joe and how did that go? Ben: Very good, pretty easy. R: You remember what you did? Ben: First I put on some paper, then I glued the sticks and the bridle on, third I taped the bridle so it can stick. And then I went to do the nylon. R: When you helped Joe, did you do all this for him? Ben: I just told him what to do. Bens comments suggest he has a clear understanding of the sequence of steps for making a kite and also some of the terminology. Although he initially spoke as though he took over the task from Joe, in fact, he helped Joe to accomplish these tasks in much the same way Jane worked with the children. This action provided Ben with an opportunity to further familiarise, practise and embed skills and conceptual knowledge, and it provided Joe with timely help and support. It was made possible because of the freedom Jane allowed during the design and make process and her encouraging students to share their expertise. It was also made possible because Ben had sufficient confidence in his own knowledge and skills to offer support: he had tested out/flown his kite and knew that it worked. It was often the case in the technology units we observed that the students validated their work through a testing process focused on whether it met the functional requirements of the overall task. They did not seek out, or require, their teacher as a source of authority. This contributed to their independence and autonomy. In another example, three boys in Ellies Year 3 and 4 class supported each other to design and make masks for their school production. Hemi, Tukai and Jay had decided to make fire masks. Tukai and Jay were unable to begin their concept sketches until Hemi advised them to look at what Im doing and do it like this. When Tukai said he could not draw very good flames, the following conversation ensued: Hemi: Im doing it soft so I can rub it out easily. Tukai: Its too hard to draw. Hemi: Just do it soft and try and work it out. Tukai: I know about a skeleton. [The group had a mask book with a skeleton mask plan and finished product, which they were examiningsee Figure 8.6]

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Figure. 8.6. Looking at skeleton masks.

Shall we just do a skeleton? Its easy to draw. Hemi: But Im drawing flames. Tukai: Who cares, Im just going to do a skeleton. Hemi: Flame eyes, Im doing flame eyes. Jay: Come on [to Tukai] lets just do a sketch. Tukai: You can. Im not. [After 10 minutes Ellie arrived on the scene. She knew of the stalled progress of Jay and Tukai. She brought the storybook How Maui Found the Secret of Fire and put it on the table by Tukai.] Ellie: Have you boys decided on what your mask is going to be? Hemi: Ae [Yes] a flame mask. Tukai: [He looks through the story book and stops at an illustration of a volcano erupting] We dont know how to do flames. Can we do Maui and the sun? Ellie: No. Thats not our story. Tukai: Well do the flames then, on the volcano. Jay: [Begins to draw flames as hair] Tukai: [Starts to draw a volcano while looking at the book illustration, then rubs it out] [As other students finished their concept sketches, they brought them to Ellie for comment. Kuni was one of these students and had overheard some of the drawing flames conversation] Kuni: Here [to Tukai]. I can help. Give me your paper. [He draws flames for hair and an oval shape for the face]

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Tukai: Oh, thats it. Kuni: Yeah, see the top and bottom? Tukai: Do we do flame edges as well? [Tukai had taken his paper back from Kuni] Jay: You can if you want. [He has copied Hemi and drawn flames across the top and bottom of his page] Tukai: Now I see. Im not gonna do flame eyes, just eyeholes. Do we do eyebrows? [They all draw eyeholes and a mouth. Hemi adds flames around the eyes on his mask.] Hemi: Does my mask look like a flame mask? [He shows the otherssee Figure 8.7] Jay, Tukai and Kuni: Yeah. Tukai: Look at my mouth. It looks ugly. I want to do it over again. [Jay, Kuni and Hemi looked but did not comment. Kuni then helped Tukai draw the mouth again after Tukai had rubbed the first attempt outsee Figure 8.8]

Figure 8.7. Hemis concept sketch.

Figure 8.8. Kuni helping Tukai.

This extended conversation between the boys and Ellie demonstrated how the challenge of drawing flames was resolved by peers sharing and discussing ideas and techniques. First Hemi exhorted Tukai to copy him. Hemi also offered helpful advice to try just do it soft and try and work it out. Then Tukai thinks of drawing

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a skeleton as a substitute because I know about a skeleton. Its easy to draw. However, Hemis comment, But Im doing flames, and Jays urging, Come on, just do a sketch, thwarted Tukais decision. When Ellie arrived Tukais request to draw something from Maui and the sun was rejected as inappropriate because Thats not our story. It was the volcano image in the Maui book supplied by Ellie that prompted Jay to draw volcano flames as hair and Tukai to draw a volcano (subsequently erased). The image of volcano flames was an idea source for Jay, as was Hemis drawing. Though the volcano image helped Tukai begin drawing, he did not choose to go on with it. It wasnt until Kuni offered practical assistance and began drawing the outside shape of a flame mask that Tukai had the impetus to carry on. He was then able to draw the eyeholes and make a decision about not drawing flame eyes. He also drew a mouth, but did not like it, erased it and, with Kunis help, redrew. The students held each other accountable for focusing on and accomplishing the task, which in and of itself was one with implications for the class as a whole and not just for students as individuals. We can see here that the classroom culture was such that students did not accept all advice from others. Students sometimes had to work hard to convince their peers of the merit of their suggestions. In the end it was the collaborations amongst the students, and between the students and Ellie, that contributed to the successful completion of the mask design task. Our teachers also invited in people with expertise relevant to the topic under study, as a strategy to lend credibility to tasks and authority to criteria beyond the classroom. Tayla made substantial use of the expert other in her unit on percussion instruments (see Chapter 5). These experts provided complementary skills and knowledge to assist Taylas students in the construction task. The students were very appreciative of this extra help. For example, Sage (12 years) commented that Mr. T (the hard materials teacher) helped us because we didnt know how to drill holes. You need a smaller hole to get a tighter fit. Anna (11 years) reported: Our music teacher helped me learn by pulling apart the piano and we could see how it happened and made sound. The wire had to be loose for the lower sounds and tight for the higher sounds. My teacher (Tayla) helped by putting stuff on the mat in the activity room and letting us go down there on our own to look at it. Grant involved a conservationist in his unit on kiwi and the design of traps for pests found in environments that kiwi inhabit with his Year 5 to 8 students. When the class visited the kiwi sanctuary (See Chapter 5Lois and Grant taught at the same school and their classes visited the sanctuary together), the people there explained to the students what they took into account when they designed a pestproof fence. They also showed the students successful commercial traps used to catch pests ranging from stoats, rats and possums. A conservationist then came to class where he was the audience as students explained and demonstrated how the traps they had designed worked for their nominated pest. As each group presented their trap, he commented

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on the extent to which he thought it met general criteria particularised for the specified pests behaviours, habits and form. This combination of actions added credibility to the task and task criteria. Through it, Grant brought the students into conversation with experts from outside the classroom to understand the full implications of the demands and wider relevance of the task. Student actions and comments indicated they valued the affirmation from the conservationist, especially the student who planned to use his groups trap to catch possums on his family farm. We interpret this students action as showing an intention to exercise agency beyond the classroom. He took upon himself the authority to persuade his father to help his group make a working trap that could deal with a problem they were experiencing at home. This is a clear example of the transfer of agency into a students home environment. This is the ideal, but we struggled to gather evidence of this sort. Seeding the Environment with Material Resources to Support Student Agency Artefacts as meditational tools can produce shifts in authority and power and the shape of knowledge (Wertsch, 1998). Teachers who understand this influence can seed the environment with artefacts intended for use as sources of information and feedback. Wall displays, book corners, science and technology tables and displays of real science and technology artefacts were used by the InSiTE teachers to help create science and technology friendly environments. Seeding of the environment with such material resources indicated that both science and technology oriented discussion was welcome and valued. They helped to create opportunities for informal talk about science and technology ideas and practices. When students have easy and ongoing access to material resources for analysis and for use in testing out their ideas they do not need to rely on the teacher for feedback. As we described in Chapter 6, both science and technology are material practicesexperimentation and testing play an important role in legitimating ideas and practices. So does careful analysis. Students comparing and interrogating artefacts and resources was part of students selfreview and decision making in our InSiTE classrooms. For instance, Lois planned a kitemaking unit for her Year 1 to 4 students. During the first lesson, she showed her students a range of commercially made kites that were suitable for young children to fly. While they examined these kites, the students shared their experiences of making and flying kites. Next day a number of students brought from home kites and books with plans for how to make kites. They also recounted anecdotes of their parents kite experiences. Lois then modelled the steps involved in making a kite using an action plan she had accessed from the web. Her modelling was for the students, who had been allocated into small groups, to replicate by copying each step as Lois worked through them. This process was intended by Lois to help the students understand the key steps and features of kites and to develop the skills needed to make a kite of their own design. For the next lesson Lois had the students, working in groups, use the action plan to produce a different, but similar kite. This time Lois prepared separate sequential posters for each of the steps. She placed the relevant poster beside her and referred to both the text and the diagrams as she demonstrated

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that step. The posters were then displayed on the classroom wall. This strategy allowed for student independence and agency because the students did not need to consult Lois as the only source of authority to find out next steps. We observed groups sending delegates over to read the poster steps and then return to explain what was next. As well, while students were working on their kite designing and making, other students wandered by and sometimes commented on progress and the quality of the work. The wanderer assumed authority over the students who were working and took on the role of the teacher in offering suggestions about next steps. During these explanations the students sometimes returned to a poster point on the appropriate step as a source of authority. Without a classroom culture giving students freedom of movement to openly access artefacts, it is doubtful if these students would have been able to assume such authority. In another example, Jane and her Year 1 students were outside flying their kites. Jane noticed that a number of them were experiencing difficulty. Several students approached her for assistance. She realised that the kite tails were the problem. So she called the students inside and as a class they examined and discussed the features of the commercially made kite that was their model (Figure 8.9).

Figure 8.9. Class discussion about kite difficulties.

It became obvious that the commercial kite tails were much narrower and longer than many of the tails the students had made. As a result, the students successfully modified their kite tails. When they went outside to retest, their kites flew, much to their delight. Janes use of artefacts to support her students learning to design and make kites provides another example of the role artefacts can play in the distribution of agency in support of student learning. She had seeded the room with a range of books, pictures and commercial kites, which students referred to during kite making. They also sought help from each other. For Robert, this freedom of access to books and ready-made kites was a source of autonomy and agency. Robert was a second language student with very poor spoken English skills. He demonstrated very little inclination to write or draw an action plan. However he was very enthusiastic about kite making. He watched closely

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Figure 8.10. Robert making his kite.

as Jane made the first replica kite and once released to work on his own, he set off with great enthusiasm, very quickly producing a creditable kite (Figure 8.10). With Janes consent he went outside to try it out and it flew. When Roger had problems with his second and third kites gaining elevation, he went back and checked his first kite and examined the commercial kites. He then made adjustments to his later kites to bring them into line with the first one. This checking with his successful kite was very systematic and interspersed with test flying. Combined, these two examples from the classrooms of Lois and Jane illustrate that student use of artefacts as a referent when judging quality, and as a source of information and ideas for next steps, relies on them being able to access these artefacts as and when needed. Teachers authority over students usually extends to control over their movement. Leaving students free to decide when and how they accessed resources within the classroom was a powerful, if implicit, demonstration that teachers trusted students to pursue learning goals independent of them.
FOSTERING STUDENT AFFILIATION WITH SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Gregory Kelly, Allan Luke and Judith Green (2008) propose that learning disciplinary knowledge entails developing identity and affiliation, critical epistemic stance, and dispositions as learners participate in the discourse and actions of a collective social field (p. xi). This focus reframes what counts as success to include student affiliation with, in our study, science and technology and whether students come to view themselves as science or technology people, both in and out of the classroom, and in the short and longer term (Archer et al., 2010; Kelly, Luke & Green, 2008). There is value therefore in considering how AfL practices data generation approaches, dialogues and feedback support student affiliation with science and technology as areas of current, and future, relevance and interest (Willis, 2011). AfL has a role to play in helping students to recognise that their classroom learning has meaning for them and their lives out of

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school, and vice versa. Teacher AfL practices need to help students participate and find affiliation with the identity of an autonomous science/technology learner. Attributing Value to Student out of School Experiences The InSiTE teachers routinely invited students to contribute their ideas and out of school experiences as part of whole class and small group tasks. These ideas and experiences were construed as having a legitimate contribution to make to class curriculum learning. Gail, during a unit of friction with her Year 3 and 4 students, invited Rob to talk about how his father was a mechanic who worked with engines. Rob said that he often spent time with his dad in the workshop and explained to the class how oil is used to reduce friction in motors. Gail legitimised Robs contribution by reinforcing the importance of oil for reducing friction in a range of vehicles and appliances. Simon (7 years) commented during a lesson with Lois that it was easy for him to make the healthy snacks because he did heaps of cooking at home. Lois indicated to him that because she anticipated that he would not have problems understanding a recipe, he would be in a good position to help others. These examples are illustrative of how the teachers recognised students outofschool experiences as having value in their science and technology learning in the classroom. Students were positioned as authoritative over matters where they had expertise to contribute. In Lois Year 1 to 4 class a small group brainstorm provided the opportunity and space for students to share their ideas about and experiences of kiwi. The brainstorm task revealed their breadth of knowledge and interest in kiwi as a unique New Zealand bird. The photograph here (Figure 8.11) shows one groups brainstorm recording sheet (the students were aged 57 years). Sophie, who had been at school only four days, contributed the ideas that kiwis only live on land and are spishal [special] to New Zealand. In subsequent lessons Lois drew on Sophies knowledge and interest as a resource for class learning in science. Lois action signalled that Sophies everyday experiences and insights were of value in the curriculum. Sophie was one of many students who brought ideas and resources from home throughout the unit.

Figure 8.11. Student brainstorm recording sheet.

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The InSiTE teachers were sensitive to the breadth of experiences the students were likely to have to contribute to a particular topic. In a following year, Lois used a structured brainstorm of four focus questions to scaffold her students contributing their ideas on fossils (see chapter 7 bubble sheets). The action of providing a structured brainstorm was grounded in her experience that this class had not yet developed the collaborative questioning and scientific thinking skills needed to undertake an open brainstorm. She also considered that her students science knowledge of fossils would be restricted. The four questions that were provided one at a time in sequence, assisted the students to recall their experiences of reading books, seeing videos, visiting museums and seeing fossils in situ with their families. This staged brainstorm produced rich information on student ideas and experiences of fossils. Lois action of according value and distributing authority to students outofschool experiences and learning helped them make connections with the new science learning. Attributing Students with the Identity of Scientist/Technologist At times, the InSiTE teachers explicitly positioned their students as scientists/ technologists through a combination of talk and tasks. They used this practice so that their students realised that what they were doing and learning was science/technology. The explicit attribution of identity was usually prospective and occurred when the teachers introduced and explained a task. It projected students into a different relationship with the task and the teachers, a relationship whereby the criteria for quality for a task were linked to the expected processes experts use to undertake and evaluate their work. At the same time, the direct linking to the work of scientists/ technologists signalled that the criteria had significance beyond the immediate task. In one example, Ellie talked with her Year 3 and 4 students about being designers before their task of designing a mask to make for their forthcoming school production. She led a whole class discussion to establish the mask specifications and told the class that their design drawings had to include these specifications. Ellie then showed the students an architectural drawing of a house elevation, commenting: This is a design drawing of a house. Can you see the roof, the walls, the windows, the doors? The students nodded each time. Ellie then said: The designer had to put all those things in his drawing. They were his specifications. You are going to be designers just like him. You need to show in your drawing that you have thought about all of the specifications weve decided. You need to draw what you are going to make. Can you do this? The students were positive they could and their subsequent designs successfully addressed all specifications. Through Ellies strategic questions and use of physical artefacts (design drawings), her students were able to engage with some of the language, artefacts and relationships of designers, who work with a brief. Through her identifying the students as technologists, Ellie provided opportunities for students to engage with classroom learning through another lens. They had a chance to consider how these elements of the discipline might come together in practice.
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In another example, Lois positioned her Year 1 to 4 students as scientists, specifically as palaeontologists, when she told the class they were going on a fossil dig. Lois knew that some students had seen actual fossils in situ and in a museum, but the dig was intended to ensure all the students learned about how scientists excavate them. The dig took place in the school sandpit and the fossils were wooden dinosaur bones. Lois introduced the dig by saying, Today we are going to pretend we are palaeontologists. She read aloud from a picture book about how palaeontologists find bones and that fossil bones are very fragile and so scientists need to be careful and use special tools (brushes) on a dig. She showed students another book that explained how palaeontologists sketched the site and any fossils before removing them. She then gave the students the special tools (a brush and ice cream stick) they were to use. At the dig (the sandpit), the students were very careful as they delicately brushed the sand and looked for the fossils and then sketched the location of the fossils they found prior to removing them. At the dig the students discussed the need to be very careful because the fossils were fragile. The pretend fossil dig was a precursor to the students going on a real fossil dig at a local beach. It provided a forum for discussion of the expectations and obligations of palaeontologists. By encouraging students to identify with what it meant to be a palaeontologist, Lois helped her students clarify why it was important to be careful and methodical when digging for fossils. While Ellie and Lois made explicit links between tasks and students working as technologists and scientists, more often the teachers positioned students as learning and doing science or technology rather than being scientists and technologists. The teachers identified the topic of study as being a science or a technology topic. They introduced the units as science and technology and reminded the students of this over the course of a unit. Students Talking about Science and Technology Student endofunit commentary indicated that they had formed clearer pictures of what science and technology were about. Their ideas linked to, and often extended beyond, the activities and topics of the unit they had completed. In the case of science, Kevin, a Year 4 student from Jennys class studying classification, linked doing science with putting things into groups, although he realised not all science involved this. [Scientists] put things into groups and you can tell if its alive or not alive. Were doing science too, cos we put things into groups. We looked at animals, plants, things that are alive and not alive, and sorted into groups. There is different science though. We did sound science before. There are lots of kinds of science. Students from Carols Year 7 class, speaking after a science unit on adaptation, highlighted aspects of investigation. All the students explicitly stated that both men and women could be scientists and that scientists work to help us. Sara explained: Science is about experimenting and adding liquids to liquids to create a new thing. Its investigating. We investigated adaptation and investigated fish.

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Scientists find out about new medicines. They work both in the laboratory and out and about. They go out to find things they want to use in the laboratory like investigating plants. There are women scientists and men. Both can be scientists. I think of them as old with big, white, funny coats and with lots of pockets in their jackets full of lots of things. Scientists do good things for good causes. Students comments after a technology unit indicated that they had developed a view of technology as making things for people. Adam, a Year 3 student of Gails, commented: Its about other people and how things would work for them and for me. Its about making. Tim, a Year 8 student in Taylas class, provided a more comprehensive view, relating technology to purposeful designing and making, with particular artefacts and activities being designed for specific groups of people: Its something that helps us do something. For example, the whiteboard is like a pen and paper, but a development. Chairs help us sit instead of sitting on the ground. A cup is to drink water from easier. Glasses help us see better. Technology helps us do things and makes things better. Like in the sewing room we have heaters to keep us warm in winter. So its not just electrical things. Taken together, student comments on what constituted science and technology are encouraging. They indicate that the students had developed a view of both science and technology as disciplines that have a positive contribution to make and that they could link this contribution to their own lives.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS

In this chapter our focus shifted from the process of AfL to focus on the outcomes of learning, specifically providing opportunities for students to develop autonomy and agency pertaining to their learning and learning how to learn in science and technology. Our interest was centred on AfL practices that develop what a student knows and support their growing appreciation of how and why something is valued and viewed as legitimate within a particular discipline. That is, we were interested in how our InSiTE teachers supported their students learning how to do learning in each subject. We were also interested in supporting student learning as entailing students engaging with an identity as an autonomous learner who has an affiliation with science/technology. To illustrate these aspects we examined the ways the InSiTE teachers AFL practices supported student, and teacher, opportunities and incentives to exercise agency. Specifically, we illustrated how autonomy and agency were shaped and constrained by the nature of the InSiTE classrooms as social settings in which particular patterns of participation and responsibility had been established. These social aspects shaped whose contributions were taken to be of merit and which actions and ideas influenced what came to count as valued and legitimate knowledge in a particular classroom. When students had opportunities to exercise autonomy and agency the teacher was not the sole authority in the classroom: teachers and students shared responsibility for learning. Classroom learning relationships were supportive

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and collaborative, characterized by mutual trust among teachers and students. In this case, the classroom was a place where student attempts to progress their learning were valued and prioritised. Throughout the chapter we illustrated some of the AfL practices teachers can use to make tasks meaningful to students and to hold them to account for explaining and justifying their ideas. Success criteria that are authentic and meaningful have an important role to play as a resource for strategically guiding student learning, but it is important these do not restrict or delimit what might be learned. Through the gradual introduction to students of criteria and the rules for using them, teachers are able to support students to monitor their own learning. Teachers can design and fade scaffolding in a way that cedes authority and transfers responsibility to students for making independent evaluative decisions as student expertise develops. Teachers can activate students, peers, and others in the provision of feedback to the benefit of all. They can seed the environment with a variety of artefacts to be used as sources of knowledge and feedback for students to use, to test out and trial their ideas and develop their practices. In this way students learn to exercise autonomy and agency within a system of accountabilities that are responsive to student individual and collective needs and interests and to ways science and technology warrant knowledge. They have opportunities to develop identities as agentic, and autonomous, learners who are aware of, and able to employ, the accountability systems for knowledge generation and legitimation that have value outside the classroom. Student affiliation with science and technology can be seen as an important first step in developing an identity that encompasses knowing about and using science and technology (see Willis, 2011, for a similar argument). As part of setting up the possibility of students longerterm engagement with a discipline, AfL practices need to support student affiliation with teacher goals for learning in a manner that also fosters student conceptual agency. It is important that AfL supports student motivation to continue to learn science and technology by helping students to see themselves in science/technology (Bolstad & Hipkins, 2008). The InSiTE teachers did this through a process of direct attribution and by according value to student ideas and everyday experiences. In our final chapter we present our concluding thoughts about AfL and consider implications related to research and policy.

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CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

In chapter 1 we presented our aspirations for this book. We set out to make a contribution to practical and theoretical understandings of AfL including how AfL can be used to constructively shape learning and students identities as active and informed learners. Our aim for the book was to illustrate the following: Student learning autonomy is promoted when teachers deliberately provide opportunities for students to exercise agency within a system of accountabilities to people and the discipline. Productive AfL interactions are shaped by and are reflective of the way a particular discipline generates and warrants knowledge. Productive AfL is embedded in interactions that are multifaceted, multimodal and take place over multiple time scales.

The preceding chapters demonstrated these three points through examples we gleaned from primary science and technology classrooms over three years. In this final chapter we provide some concluding thoughts about AfL in practice and consider implications related to research and policy. As a finale we affirm our definition of AfL and reiterate our hope that the promise of AfL will be realised because of the considerable benefits it signals for helping to develop students as lifelong learners.
SOME CONCLUDING COMMENTS ON ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING IN PRACTICE

One of our aims was to show how AfL might be accomplished in classrooms. In the New Zealand context, where teachers are expected to plan science and technology teaching units to build on the strengths and meet the needs of their students, planning emerged as a key means of supporting responsive teacher AfL practices. We agree with Lorrie Shepard (2006, p. 629) that: Assessment cannot promote learning if it is based on tasks or questions that divert attention from the real goals of instruction. Classroom instruction should engage students in learning activities that are as directly as possible instantiations of the real goals for learning. In our study the development and use of a subject specific lessonplanning framework was important as a mechanism for building a shared understanding of AfL and for teachers and researchers working with each other to explore and enhance AfL in science and technology education primary classrooms. As we explained in Chapter 4,
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using the twolayered subjectspecific planners impacted positively on how teachers prepared for teaching science and technology and on how they subsequently worked in a responsive manner in the classroom. Using the planners helped our teachers identify and carefully choose the multifaceted science and technology ideas and practices appropriate for their students. The planners helped our teachers discern the knowledge they would need to teach these ideas and practices, as well as choose the applicable pedagogical approaches for teaching the ideas and practices. Teachers extensive and detailed planning was important in providing students with authentic opportunities for learning and assessment (Sadler, 1989). Because teachers had mapped out a broad trajectory and progression for how student learning might proceed they were more confident in attending to the spirit of AfL as noticing and taking up opportunities to respond flexibly to student ideas, interests and skills to progress student learning in a way that supported student autonomy. However, two caveats are needed here. First, teacher planning and preparation was not enacted in a prescriptive manner, rather it provided teachers with a network of possibilities for guiding student learning. They crafted the conceptual landscape (Leinhardt & Steele, 2005) as a web of interconnected ideas and practices that could be responsively explored. This allowed teachers to work within the spirit of AfL as a process in which both teachers and students took responsibility for outcomes and so some outcomes were emergent. It helped them meet their own obligations for guiding student learning within the mandated curriculum in a way that offered space for student input thereby fostering student learning and learning capability. Second, the teachers considered that their involvement in developing the framework made a crucial contribution to their own learning and, subsequently, their confidence and efficacy in AfL. The framework served as an artefact to support and enhance individual and collective learning in much the same way material artefacts served to support student learning in the classroom. While we advocate the use of a tool such as our planning framework to provide a scenario and resource for discussion and pedagogical action we believe that every group of teachers would need to develop their own mediating artefact. In Chapters 5, 6 and 7 we presented a case for AfL as productive when it is embedded in interactions that are multifaceted, multimodal and take place over multiple time scales. We showed, through telling examples, how different modes used in combination, multiplied opportunities for making and expressing meaning. Our teachers explicitly focused on developing their students science and technology language proficiency, but almost always talk was augmented by action, writing and/ or the visual mode. Teachers thinking about multimodality can contribute to teacher and student AfL interactions and practices, particularly when teachers plan for and engage with student learning as a multimodal accomplishment undertaken over time. It is important in todays diverse classrooms to provide students with a variety of multimodal opportunities to demonstrate and develop their learning because this acknowledges, accommodates and supports the diversity of experience and expertise that students bring and take away from any one lesson. Through these practices students everyday knowledge, expertise and modes of representation are valued and diversity becomes a resource.
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When we began our research we took for granted students undertaking handson activities. After all, practical involvement is a very familiar, yet often unappreciated, aspect of science and technology in primary schools. Over the course of the study we gave more value and attention to the way the material dimension of science and technology and material artefacts mediated thinking and acting. The artefacts and tasks teachers select to illustrate and exemplify science and technology are important in helping shape and frame the range of ideas and practices available in the public space of the classroom. The artefacts teachers produce and teachers and students construct together during the course of a lesson can, to a greater or lesser extent, invite, allow and/or complement individual and collective meaning making and communication. Nonetheless, the positive influence of an artefact on interaction is not a given. This influence depends on the history of use of the particular artefact and its introduction, use and development within the particular task and interactions in which it is entangled. There is benefit in teachers taking the time to consider how illustrative examples and the educational artefacts they select, design and use might scaffold students active participation in disciplinary practices as part of their AfL. In Chapter 7 we focused on the role of time and temporal aspects. The time that teachers and students spend together is an important resource for learning, but learning needs to be pursued across tasks and lessons as coherent, connected and cumulative. Our teachers actively sought to build common knowledge and connected understandings of success criteria to help students experience their learning as coherent. We contend that AfL feedback that helps students make connections is an underrecognised practice, but one that is important in science and technology. In science students often need to draw on a matrix of interrelated concepts to account for phenomena (Scott, Mortimer & Ametller, 2011). In technology students need to access and combine multiple knowledge bases and practices to address a design task and produce a viable product/process. When we view learning as a longterm activity it is important that teachers help students appreciate how individual ideas and practices come together to form a whole that is more than the sum of the parts. AfL can make an important contribution to this and this understanding can help students to be more strategic in taking responsibility for monitoring and progressing their own learning. Finally, in Chapter 8, we showed how our teachers fostered the development of student identities as autonomous learners affiliating with science and technology. Student learning autonomy is the ultimate goal of AfL. We illustrated that when teachers deliberately provide opportunities for students to exercise agency within a system of accountabilities to people and the discipline, students learning autonomy and agency are fostered. We considered how AfL practices might provide opportunities for students to develop identities as people who are inclined and able to identify, access and deploy a range of means and resources to monitor and progress their own learning. We hope we have illustrated that student opportunities to exercise conceptual agency and autonomy are entangled in the tasks a teacher uses to foster, guide and resource student learning. Students benefit from opportunities to develop and test out ideas and practices through engagement with multiple resources (peers, adults,
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artefacts, experimentation, and so on). The teacherstudent relationship is the key context for mediating the kind of open, trusting and respectful relationships that empower students to participate actively and responsibly in learning. However, relationships of this kind challenge traditional teacherstudent roles and responsibilities of power and control within the context of classroom assessment, which may require both teachers and students to develop new understandings and patterns of participation (Coffey, Sato, & Thiebault, 2005; Harrison, 2005; Pedder, 2006; Tierney, 2006). The spirit of AfL is evoked when teachers have a pedagogical mindset that foregrounds the sharing of responsibility with students as the norm and students have proactive relationships of participation with each other, with the teacher and the subject (Gipps, 1999). Such practices provide a foundation for teachers to create an inclusive culture focused on learning. Teacher and student shared understandings of learning, as both an individual and collective responsibility and act are central to change. Our InSiTE teachers became very comfortable with seeing themselves as learners learning about teaching the subjects of science and technology to their students in ways that moved student learning forward. They were aware of making space for fuzzy and emergent outcomes when they were teaching in their classrooms and well aware of the danger of only teaching to what was specified in their planning. How students responded, and the kinds of learners teachers aimed to develop, impacted on all their actions. Their learners were centre stage and actively involved. As Sue Swaffield (2011) notes, learning becomes a joint supportive enterprise in which everyone has a part to play in the collective responsibility for the activities and their outcomes. Our teachers embraced AfL and we found that their changed ideas and practices were not restricted to their students in their classrooms. Because our teachers were also learners, they examined their views about what is important in learning, made decisions about how to improve and worked together to realise their goals.
SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

Internationally, there has been a push for greater teacher involvement in research as part of increased concern with evidence informed policy and practice (McNamara, 2007). Over the last two decades research has shifted from a focus on research on or for teachers, to researching with teachers. Ralph Putnam and Hilda Borko (2000) make a case for the value of longerterm collaborations whereby teachers and researchers come together and try out, enact and discuss ideas as a means for understanding and enhancing situated educational practices. Our research set out to build capacity in classroombased research. Our partnership research model recognised the importance of everyones ideas and therefore over the course of the project we worked collaboratively and supportively in workshops and in classrooms to form a new community of practice focused on extending knowledge and practice. A planning framework became a valued strategic tool in our blended community of practice. The framework served as a boundary object in the sense described by Etienne Wenger (1998) in that it provided a focus and opportunities for joint

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negotiation of meaning and coordination of perspectives (OtrelCass, Cowie, Moreland & Jones, 2009). An important boundary practice was for the teachers and researchers to get together and unravel the planning framework in the light of specific teaching scenarios. In this way the planning framework was a boundary object that served as a tool to deprivatize classroom practice and it provided a context to develop common knowledge and language that could more readily support conversations about student learning. As described earlier, the planning framework was refined over the course of the project as our understandings of effective practice and interaction developed. Other researchers have begun to explore the potential of a community of practice framework in conjunction with boundary objects as part of researcher and teacher collaborations (Tibergien, Vince, Gaidioz & Coince, 2010). Our work suggests that this orientation towards blending communities is worthy of further exploration. A sociocultural perspective has implications for what constitutes learning and for what constitutes the appropriate unit of analysis. We turned to the theory of multimodality to help us describe and make sense of the complexity of AfL as a situated and interactional process that can accommodate difference and facilitate student agency. However, we have only skimmed the surface of what multimodality might mean for classroom research on assessment in science and technology. There is space for a fuller exploration of the disciplinespecific language, symbols and texts that scientists and technologists use to develop, represent, and communicate knowledge. There is room for a more thorough explication of the affordances of different modes and media including writing, demonstrative action, photographs, physical models and so on. Similarly, we sought to take into account the temporal aspects of learning but this is another area that would benefit from further exploration to understand the iterative adaptive dynamic of AfL. Like Neil Mercer and Karen Littleton (2007) we found that to appreciate the educational value of interactions between teachers and their students we needed to know what happened before and after an interaction. We also needed to understand how any one task and its goals fitted into the bigger picture and longer-term goals of the class and individual student learning pathways. We were fortunate to be involved with teachers, and some students, for three years, which helped us to understand something of the nuanced shifts in teacher and student experiences and classroom cultures over time. More research is needed that traces student learning over the long term and across contexts to understand how practices understood and used in one setting can serve as useful and generative resources in other settings and times. When students are viewed as active and agentic within the learning process, it becomes important to understand what counts for them and how they experience assessment from their point of view. Research is needed that accesses multiple perspectives. It cannot be assumed that teachers and students will understand the same event the same way. Moreover, teachers and students together need to develop new ways of being teachers and learners within a classroom for the full potential of AfL to be realised. We need a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how the transfer

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and sharing of authority from teacher to student can work so that students become agentic and resourceful learners. We need a better understanding of how teachers can elicit, challenge, build on and develop the diversity of ideas and experiences students have to offer: How can teachers communicate and develop a classroom culture that balances respect with critique? When student ideas and experiences are given status and space we need to understand how teaching, learning and curriculum evolves over time and towards a particular, but not fully circumscribed, goal. One of the features of primary classrooms, in New Zealand at least, is that one teacher teaches the same class of students for the whole day and for all curriculum areas. This gives teachers access to information about their students learning across a broad range of contexts. An astute teacher can accumulate evidence of students applying ideas and skills outside the context/curriculum in which the particular ideas and skills were taught. For example, Jane reported that one of her students, Alex, chose to produce and follow an action plan to make a fridge magnet some time after he had been taught about action plans in the context of making a kite. She saw this as compelling evidence that Alex had strategic knowledge of action plans. In another example, the students in Marthas class were to construct a garage to house the vehicle they had designed and made. Martha showed the students examples of sliding and hinged doors. All the students except James constructed a sliding or a hinged door. Of his own accord, James designed and made a drawbridgestyle door mechanism. The class had studied drawbridges the previous term but he was the only student to adapt the mechanism to this new situation. Martha commented that his model indicated a strategic understanding of the form and function of a drawbridge mechanism. The challenge these examples highlight is equally problematic for teachers and researchers: How to trace and document an individuals learning over time and across contexts? This challenge is likely to become more salient as we place greater emphasise on schools preparing students to make active use of the knowledge and skills they develop over their life time and across the many communities of which they are members. Although not a feature of the InSiTE project, we have paid some attention to assessment of learning throughout the book. For instance, in Chapter 8 we described how Grant guided his students to document their learning in portfolios over time and how both the students and Grant used this documentation for summative purposes. Gails collation of student oral responses allowed her to develop a broader sense of their knowledge and interests when assessing summatively. Coexistence of AfL and summative assessment is possible. However, a positive interaction between AfL and summative assessment is not easy to accomplish and continues to be contentious: students, teachers, schools and families all need to value and be able to interpret the evidence that is used to communicate student learning and learning progress. We remind readers here of the New Zealand assessment context at the primary level where there is no standardised external assessment in science and technology at the school or national level. In the InSiTE classrooms, evidence of student learning accumulated over the course of a unit, and documented in portfolio form, was

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accepted by schools and parents as an authentic source of information on student learning progress. We acknowledge that the nature of AfL and summative assessment practices that are mutually informing will be situation specific. More research is required that explores the impact on student learning when AfL and summative assessment are coherent and mutually supportive. Research is also needed that takes into account students learning opportunities and the alignment of summative assessment. However, schoolwide requirements and department or syndicate norms and expectations can erode individual teacher ability to develop and use their own summative practices that they think will progress learning. For example, Jane faced resistance from syndicate colleagues when she wanted to design a different assessment task related to mixtures for inclusion in her students summative portfolios. She was very aware that her 5yearold students would not be able to represent what they had learned in a written mode. She initially proposed for her students to draw their ideas then talk with her so that she could annotate their drawings to better reflect the extent of their ideas. Her syndicate colleagues were concerned that what she proposed would take too much time and also that she might be giving her students an easy task that would look good in their portfolios. The compromise was that Janes students were asked to identify mixtures from a set of digital photographs, to draw a mixture and to briefly talk to her about their thinking to do with mixtures. These activities provided a chance for the students to show that they could apply their learning about mixtures in new contexts, thus demonstrating their depth of understanding. What Jane gave value to with her summative assessment ensured she did justice to her students because it built on her students classroom learning experiences. This example indicates researchers need to take a lead in supporting teachers to develop summative practices that are authentic and can stand scrutiny. Summative assessment needs to reflect and accommodate the diversity of ways students have of making their learning visible. As Paul Black, Christine Harrison, Jeremy Hodgen, Bethan Marshall and Natasha Serret (2011) point out, work is required to develop a dependable assessment system that is acceptable and valuable to all involved.
SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY

Turning to think about the policy we need to be mindful that AfL is but one component within the system of educational assessment in operation in any school and country. We acknowledge that teacher classroom practice is situated in a multi-layered and interactive system in which curriculum and assessment policy, teacher knowledge, and professional development opportunities, and student and family/community expectations have a profound effect on how learning and what it means to know play out in a particular classroom. Assessment for and of learning both have a role to play in supporting quality teaching and learning and both need to be part of a total, balanced and blended assessment system (Shute & Becker, 2010, p.9), to inform and enhance teaching and learning. We agree with Lorrie Shepard (2006, p. 637)

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when she asserts that formative and summative assessment need to come together to support disciplinary learning goals: the best system would be one where formative and summative assessments were mutually aligned with conceptually oriented learning goals, and where summative assessments were used as milestones of accomplishments (perhaps acknowledged by family and friends) following successful learning periods supported by formative assessment. (Italics added) How teachers can be supported to negotiate the multiple and often contradictory demands of international, national and schoolbased assessment policy needs to be a priority area for policy development, especially given the current agreement that all assessment should make some contribution to student learning (OECD, 2005; 2011). Pamela Moss (2008) reminds us that different approaches to assessment afford teachers, administrators, policy makers, other professionals and students different kinds of knowledgeable identities. Consequently, policy initiatives need to accommodate the interests of all stakeholders students, teachers, families, schools, and government agencies. There are policy implications for the professional development of teachers arising from the InSiTE study. First, as our research has illustrated, it is important to invest in teacher professional learning. It is not sufficient to invest in assessment tools alone. To be effective teacher professional development must address and build on from what teachers do in the classroom so they can experience a sense of agency in changing what they do (Wiliam, 2009). Time is needed to support teachers to reflect on their practices and assist them to reconceptualise the role assessment can play in teaching and learning. Our teachers needed to refine the planning framework over time so that it reflected their students needs and interests. Policies for teacher professional learning need to provide longer term teacher development opportunities. Second, while considerable professional development attention has been paid to AfL as a generic practice in New Zealand, less attention has been paid to subject specific AfL. Professional development policy needs to pay attention to AfL as a means to foster lifelong learning in the broad sense and in relation to being a learner and user of science and technology. Third, AfL holds considerable potential from a policy perspective at a time when classrooms are characterised by diversity. AfL does not aim to mask diversity in student thinking or experiences. Rather, it aims to recognise diversity as a resource for meaning making and identity formation. Learning and teaching may therefore become less predictable. This opens up a horizon of possibilities for learner and teacher mutual development. Professional development models need to support and build teacher learning autonomy and agency. The InSiTE partnership model demonstrated the value of combining the insights of researchers and practitioners. A theory and practice nexus expands teacher access to opportunities, incentives and ideas for meaningful change. There are policy implications from this for the impact of research. Dissemination needs to be part the research process right from the start. In the final year of the InSiTE study we provided

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our teachers with release time from their classrooms to collaborate with us for jointly writing up aspects of the study that were of interest to them. Their perceptions, and what they considered worthy of attention, were the priority in our writing. We were fortunate to be involved in a followon project (Outside InSiTE: Sharing what we know) that explored ways to disseminate the InSiTE research findings to other teachers. For Outside InSiTE we held several consultation meetings over the course of a year with the InSiTE researchers and teachers as well as other teachers and principals from outside the InSiTE project. The principals in the Outside InSiTE project emphasised that they need opportunities to learn about research findings and think through the applicability of the findings to their school. They were empathic that they were filters and translators of research and professional learning materials for their staff. An implication is that policy funding and thought need to be given to principals needs, including the development of research-based materials that they can use directly with their staff.
AFFIRMING OUR DEFINITION OF ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING

In chapter two we presented the definition of AfL that underpinned our thinking: Assessment for learning encompasses those everyday classroom practices through which teachers, peers and learners seek/notice, recognise and respond to student learning, throughout the learning, in ways that aim to enhance student learning and student learning capacity and autonomy. Assessment for learning also needs to be reflective of, responsive to, and build on from, how particular disciplines generate and legitimize meaning. We now affirm this definition for several reasons. First, it positions AfL as integral to teaching and learning. Second, it highlights that AfL is an interactive and responsive process that teachers and students engage in together. Third, the definition focuses on actions by teachers, peers and learners to advance student learning and the development of student capacity to learn. Fourth, it is about contributing to student learning in the present and into the future. Finally, it is about students learning how to learn particular subject matter that engages them in learning and selfassessment activities that are close exemplifications of the real goals and practices of a discipline. Our sociocultural orientation means that we did not look to see and support student learning autonomy and agency as solely individual qualities. Rather we conceptualised them as an interaction between the opportunities that a student had to interact and the ways she/he took up those opportunities. Throughout the book we have shown that we were not only interested in developing student learning and learning autonomy per se, but also in developing student learning and capacity to learn science and technology. Students need to learn the concepts and practices of science and technology and the how to do the learning in science and technology. They need to learn the ways of thinking, questioning, searching for, and accepting, evidence. They need to learn how to put evidence together to

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make an acceptable argument in science. They need to learn how to manage the designing process as interactive and iterative in technology. And we further argued that it is beneficial for students to develop learning connections within, and across, disciplines. We articulated how students can be supported to engage in AfL through generic classroom practices and through practices that are more specific to the social and material nature of science and technology. Writing from a sociocultural point of view, Diana Pullin has highlighted that the development of a self aware learning identity encompasses a more expansive notion of disciplinary learning. The outcomes of learning are not simply the acquisition of information and skills, but the creation of self aware learning identities marked by the capacity to invoke useful knowledge in real world settings based not only on information and skills, but as reasoning, problem solving, and critical reflection. (Pullin, 2008, p. 335) Working across the two disciplines highlighted the subtly and importance of the influences of the discipline on AfL practices. While similar generic AfL strategies and techniques can be deployed to make student ideas and attitudes visible, particularised teacher feedback on these requires a deep and flexible understanding of disciplinary content and practices. When teachers have this understanding they can draw on the characteristics and qualities of the discipline to provide feedback that does not need to rely solely on their positional authority. At the same time they can leverage disciplinary ideas and practices to activate students as generative instructional resources for one another and as a means of empowering students as owners of their own learning. The discipline and disciplinary practices for knowledge generation and legitimation provide the context for authentic student assessment of their own learning. In science, student selfmonitoring needs to attend to and draw support from how their explanations for natural phenomena and events are backed by evidence from the material world. In technology, student selfmonitoring is more likely to be concerned with the managing the tradeoff between form and function in relation to the purpose at hand. When students appreciate what it means to construct and critique knowledge claims in a particular discipline they have developed some of understandings and practices they need to act as informed and independent learners. This is the knowledge and expertise that students need so that they can construct, critique and use science and technology across the various aspects of their lives. It is also the knowledge and expertise that students need in every learning area. We have written this book in the hope that the ideas we present will support teachers in their everyday work in their classrooms. We also believe they will be of interest to researchers and policy makers. We do not apologise for presenting AfL as a complex process. AfL is necessarily a workinprogress as we learn more about curriculum, teaching and learning from theory and practice perspectives.

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SUBJECT INDEX

Agency authoritative and accountable, 115 autonomy, 34, 8, 14, 18, 112, 113138, 141, 146, 147 conceptual, 115, 119, 122, 138, 141 material, 115 social, 115 student, 67, 38, 53, 75, 116, 121, 131, 143 system of accountabilities, 5, 113, 138139, 141 teacher, 36, 38, 53, 75, 115, 137, 141, 146 Artefacts activate and problematise student knowledge and experiences, 8891 augment talk, 8688 challenges, 88, 9394 develop continuity and connections, 106109 educative, 78 enduring, 78 form and function, 82, 88, 122 introduce ideas, 9193 material and conceptual aspects, 77, 95 multimodal, 51, 77 no intrinsic meaning, 77 real artefacts in science, 7881 real artefacts in technology, 8286 scenarios and resources, 7795 seeding the environment, 131 student designed, 82, 87 teacher designed, 8688 Assessment for learning (AfL) in action/practice, 2, 8, 14, 139142 benefits of, 24 challenges, 45 definition, 912 dialogue (dialogue and scaffolding), 1416 dynamic and distributed , 1314 feedback, 1415 interactions, 1, 5, 78, 1214, 2324, 28, 30, 46, 48, 51, 75, 77, 9193, 139140 letter, 4, 49 multiple temporal levels simultaneously, 12, 1617 opportunities to learn, 2 peer-assessment, 114, 123 scaffolding, 12, 1416 self-assessment, 147

social nature, 2 sociocultural view, 7, 1112 spirit, 45, 79, 49, 62, 114, 140, 142 strategies, 10, 19, 49, 111, 148 Authority autonomy, 113, 115, 127, 137 distribution, 8, 113, 120121 opportunities to learn, 19, 113 recognising and crediting student ideas, 118119 system of accountabilities, 113, 115 Autonomy authoritative and accountable learners, 115 capable and competent learners, 2 classroom culture, 4, 18, 113, 115, 117119 definition, 5, 113 distribution of authority, 8, 113, 121 lifelong learners, 2 monitor and guide own learning progress, 114 opportunities to learn, 2, 113, 139 recognising and crediting student ideas, 118119 self-assessment, 147 system of accountabilities, 5, 113, 138139 taking responsibility, 119 Brainstorming, 3940, 5557, 62, 108, 116, 134135 Classroom assessment everyday assessment, 17 impacts on students, 1718 Classroom culture empowering learners, 2, 148 a focus on learning, 4, 19, 117 mutual support and trust, 2 routines, 6, 18, 116, 120, 126 shared meaning making, 2 shared responsibility, 4, 8, 113, 137 Class summaries, 80 Common knowledge, 38, 62, 79, 83, 85, 9798, 103, 105106, 124, 141, 143 Community of practice planning frameworks, 29, 4145, 143 teachers sharing expertise, 44, 47 Conceptual change, 11

159

SUbJEcT INDEX Disciplinary learning affiliation with science and technology, 113, 133137 subject specific planning framework, 7, 13, 2930 what, how and why of disciplines, 8 Distributed learning distribution of authority and sources of knowledge and feedback, 120121 person-plus, 14, 52 and sociocultural views, 7, 9 Educational assessment New Zealand assessment context, 7, 2123, 144 The New Zealand Curriculum, 2123 policy and societal contexts, 1920 wider system, 19 Floor books, 107, 119 Formative assessment moments of contingency, 13 and summative assessment, 30, 145146 InSiTE project aims and foci, 23 negotiated intervention, 24 student and teacher backgrounds, 2526 teachers existing ideas and practices, 2627 working in partnership, 21, 2325 Learning connections, continuity and coherency, 102, 111 environment, 1314, 116 identity work, 15 as a social process, 114, 116118, 120 sociocultural, 67, 9, 11, 13, 1618, 97, 143, 147 Micro/meso/macro ideas, 37, 112 tasks, 3738, 4041, 63 Multimodality affordances, 143 approaches, 52 and assessment, 51, 53, 143 challenges, 59, 7374 extended science example, 5462 extended technology example, 6271 hands-on activities, 28, 53, 59 modes, 51, 53, 5758, 7374 planning multimodal activities, 28, 58 160 in science, 52, 7374 sequencing tasks, 58 teacher modeling, 69, 7172 in technology, 53, 7374 theory, 51, 143 Out-of-school community connections, 135 student experiences, 134135 Patterns of participation collective responsibility, 142 distribution of authority, 8, 113 routines of participation, 114116 Peer assessment activating peers, 121, 126131 timely and relevant feedback, 15, 126131 understandable suggestions, 15 understanding how quality is judged, 122123 Person-plus, 14, 52 Policy implications accommodating all stakeholders, 146 negotiating conflicting assessment demands, 146 and professional development, 145146 Portfolio-based assessment, 32, 44, 124 Professional Development (PD) assessment PD programmers, 21 policy implications, 145146 Research boundary objects, 142143 classroom-based, 6, 51, 142143 dissemination, 24, 146 implications, 8, 138139, 142145 and multimodality, 24, 143 multiple perspectives, 143 over the long-term, 143 and policy, 8, 138139 and summative assessment, 145 with teachers, 24 Scaffolding Contingency, 15 Fading, 15, 121122, 138 material aspect, 15 social aspect, 15 transferring responsibility to student, 15 Science education goals (affiliating students with the identity of a scientist), 22, 135136 in New Zealand, 2223

SUbJEcT INDEX Social configurations Group, 38, 88 Individual, 38 whole class, 38, 88 Sociocultural views comparison with constructivist views, 11 distributed learning, 7, 9 and identity, 11, 17 and interaction, 1119 social and cultural aspects, 11, 77 temporal aspects, 11, 16 Student learning Accountabilities, 5, 141 active participants, 2, 113 classroom culture, 2, 1819, 113, 119 connections with assessment, 910, 21, 31 disciplinary knowledge, 19, 133 distribution of authority, 8 fading scaffolding, 15, 93, 121 making connections, 98, 106, 112 monitoring learning progress, 53, 113, 122, 141 opportunities to learn, 2, 1415, 74, 112113, 147 patterns of participation, 8, 113, 115, 116120, 137, 142 peer-assessment, 114, 123124 self-assessment, 124, 147 Subject-specific planning frameworks, 7, 13, 2941 Success criteria, 9, 17, 82, 104106, 111112, 138, 141 Summative assessment and formative assessment, 30, 146 reporting, 21, 118 summing up, 144, 146 teacher responsibility, 21 Tasks assessment, 36, 145 connected, 104 micro-meso-macro, 32, 3738, 4041, 6364, 82, 104105, 112, 122 multimodal, 58 planning, 14, 48 sequencing, 37, 57, 91, 99 structures, 116118 Teacher learning and knowledge analysing student work, 30 observing other teachers, 30 pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), 12, 23 planning frameworks, 7, 13, 2930, 36, 41, 146 planning and preparation, 7, 2949, 51, 140 recommendations from colleagues, 30 reflection, 9, 24, 30, 48 role of collaboration, 6, 142, 143 Teacher planning and preparation anticipation of AfL Interactions, 28 benefits, 41 learning intentions layer, 36 multimodal activities, 28 network of possibilities, 140 pedagogical link making, 98, 102 planning frameworks, 4145 teaching outline layer, 3640 web of interconnected ideas/tasks micro/ meso/macro, 140 Teaching approaches connections, continuity and coherency, 111 deliberate positioning of student authority, 141 establishing routines, 18, 116117, 119 fostering student affiliation with science and technology, 133137 recognising and crediting student ideas, 118119 seeding the environment, 131133 supporting student agency and identity, 116, 131133 teacher repertoires of assessment practice, 1213 teaching on the fly, 1, 12, 47, 6162, 117, 131 Technology education goals (affiliation with the identity of technologist), 135136 in New Zealand, 2225 Telling examples, 17, 54, 64, 113, 140 Theory-practice interface, 7, 146, 148 Time and temporality AfL aspects, 24, 95, 98, 141 and artefacts, 7 building connections, 97 learning as coherent , connected and cumulative, 17 long term and beyond the classroom, 98 medium term pedagogical link making, 98, 102 planning for learning as connected and cumulative, 99 as a resource, 17, 9799 short term, 104 and success criteria, 17, 104, 111 and talk, 77 Wall displays evolving, 61, 78, 108 point of reference, 80 public space, 110 161