LEARN/TEACH/LEAD: Enhancing RE in the South-West



LEARN/TEACH/LEAD: Enhancing RE in the South-West ©

‘BEYOND LEVELS’: ASSESSING PUPILS' ATTAINMENT AND PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ©

CURRICULUM AND ASSESSMENT NEW PAPER W1.9: BLOOM'S REVISED TAXONOMY AND ASSESMENT

1. The guidance on planning and task-setting in papers W1.2-1.9 make it clear that any task can be an assessment task.

2. This paper looks specifically on how to use the taxonomy grid to write assessments for either formative/diagnostic or summative purposes.

3. The diagram below shows the cognitive processes and relationships between them.

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4. Assessing factual knowledge

1. Recognising - is the simplest form of assessment task. There are three main methods of testing recognition: verification, matching and multiple choice.

1. Verification: (true or false)

2. matching (matching items in 2 lists e.g. pictures and names)

3. multiple choice

2. Recalling/retrieving: is harder for most pupils than recognition because it involves retrieving relevant knowledge from memory. Questions tend to be of the 'who?', 'what? when? where? type. Other types of task include writing definitions, labelling, making lists, quiz, what happened next..?

5. Assessing understanding

1. One of the key principles behind the new GCSEs is that examination questions should require pupils to apply what they, understand and can do in unseen contexts. This is in recognition that many questions in the past were tests of memory rather than of understanding.

2. Anderson and Krathwohl make the same point about using BRT for internal assessment. 'The example or set of examples is different from the examples mentioned in class. This condition is needed to ensure that understanding rather than remembering is being assessed'.

3. There are two ways of doing this:

1. set tasks related to unfamiliar cognitive processes about familiar material

2. set tasks related to unfamiliar material

4. 'Understanding' is a very broad category so there should be no difficulty in using different categories for assessment purposes and teaching purposes. e.g. pupils studied Hindu and Christian beliefs about God during the year. They spent a lot of time exemplifying those beliefs and interpreting written and visual evidence. In the end of year exam the teacher tested their understanding by asking them to compare the ideas.

5. The seven cognitive processes used to assess understanding are:

1. Interpreting: (often goes with explaining in RE): pupils are given information in one form - they change it to another. This is one of the lower order processes and one that runs the risk of testing learned knowledge rather than understanding. There are several ways of using interpreting in an assessment task e.g. interpreting what is going on in a photograph; explaining the key beliefs in a song or poem.

2. Exemplifying: Pupils are asked to give a specific example or instance of a general concept, BI or principle. The select-response format e.g. pupils are given 4 Biblical extracts (previously not studied in class) and asked to identify each with a particular genre (psalm, letter etc). The constructed-response format; pupils create an example e.g. design a Synagogue/Mosque demonstrating key features.

3. Classifying: recognising something as belonging to a certain category (See concepts). Use with caution - generally low level in RE but useful with younger children. Classifying can be a very useful for assessing how far children are developing a joined-up understanding of individual religions and common features of religion. e.g. they have to select from lists all of the a) festivals and b)rites of passage; or similarly they classify from mixed up lists the features that belong to different religions. A common structure for a classification-based assessment (very useful in RE) is is:

• to what category does the example belong?

• How do you know that?

• How can you change the example(s) so that they belong to another category or categories (see concepts).

e.g Assessment stimulus - one or more photos (unseen) of a CofE Church showing clearly the distinctive characteristics - cross, stained glass windows, altar, etc. Questions might be

• with which religion is this building associated?

• how do you know/give six examples..

• the building is no longer in use - has been sold to a local Muslim community - planning permission to turn it into a Mosque - not allowed to knock down. What changes would need to be made to transform this building into a Mosque?

• Could any of the existing features be kept and uses in the mosque?

4. Summarising: can involve suggesting a title, meaning, suggest theme or main points. Tends to be an English task rather than RE - the skill of summarising may take precedence over understanding. Better for learning than assessment.

5. Comparing: Common in RE. Doesn't have to be concrete - e.g. compare a present day event to an older one. Compare ideas. Compare something they learnt to something familiar in daily life e.g. to what extent are the Christian denominations like members of a family who can't get on? Or 'is there little difference between Christian saints and Hindu deities? Can be very high level.

6. Explaining: Students construct and use a cause-and-effect model. Another word for explaining is 'constructing a model'. This is used in history to explain why change/events happened. Explaining can also be followed by 'why' something went wrong didn't work; what could be done to make it work? Reasoning tasks ask pupils to offer a reason for an event (perhaps based on a newspaper extract as stimulus) or an event in Parliament e.g. the 1988 education act/RE. In any task, 'explain' must be followed by an interrogative (usually 'why?'). Never follow 'explain' with a noun or verb e.g. 'explain the 10 commandments' or even 'explain the meaning of the Ten Commandments' as such questions more often than not end us as tests of factual recall rather than understanding.

6. Applying: involves using procedures to carry out tasks or solve problems. Hence applying is closely linked with procedural knowledge. Applying involves 2 processes, executing and implementing.

1. Executing: occurs when pupils are faced with familiar tasks (e.g. addition) and know what to do in order to complete it. There are few examples in RE - one could be to test pupils' proficiency in using a concordance and Biblical referencing. e.g. What animals are mentioned in; Exodus 12.21…etc. (Biblical referencing). 'Give references to three places in the New Testament where the name 'Mary' appears (concordance skills). Similar tasks can be set in relation to the sacred texts of other religions.

2. Implementing: occurs when students select and use a procedure to perform an unfamiliar task. Hence the assessment task involved giving pupils an unfamiliar problem to be solved. An assessment task can usefully ask pupils to explain the process rather than find the answer. e.g. 'Explain how you would plan a response confirming or refuting the statement "most people who go to Church are over 60". Pupils would identify the process as inquiry and would need to explain what sort of evidence they would need to find, where they might look etc. Or “Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether they are ‘valid,’ let them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so.”  ― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion Pupils will identify 'evaluation' as the process to be applied and will explain how they might use evidence and argument to critique this passage. Generally high level tasks here - good for 14-19 year olds.

7. Analysing: also widely used in RE. Three processes can be used here for setting assessment tasks

1. Differentiating: pupils discriminate relevant from irrelevant/important from unimportant information. Differentiating can be used in conjunction with evaluating e.g. from an unseen passage about a familiar topic, pupils identify arguments or information that is relevant/important. For example, if pupils have been learning about the charitable work of religious groups, when presented with an unseen description of the work of an unknown charity, they will hopefully identify as irrelevant the details about how items are collected, cleaned etc by charity shop workers. Another useful task for GCSE/AL pupils would be to ask them to identify the relevant/important in an examination answer.

2. Organising: involves identifying the elements of a situation and recognising how they fit together. Organising often occurs in conjunction with differentiating. i.e. differentiating involves selecting the important/relevant material: organising involves building a coherent picture. e.g. secondary pupils could be asked to identify from an unfamiliar four-cornered discussion the relevant/important arguments relating to the existence of God. Having identified their priorities, they have to structure arguments for and against the existence of God from the selected data. Pupils could be presented with a profile of two Hindu families living in Britain and asked to select the important/relevant points relating to their Hindu identities. Then they construct their own text relating to these families a) religious activities and b) social activities within the Hindu community (or religious/social challenges). Many tasks of this kind may be better suited to class work/inquiry at the 'finding out' stage. It's worth mentioning here because teachers may find material ideally suited to an assessment task. Just make sure that the assessment does not become a 'comprehension' task i.e. English.

3. Attributing: pupils are able to determine the point of view, bias, values or intention of the writer/speaker/artist etc. e.g. pupils could watch/read/hear an interview with one or more religious leaders (so long as their identities were not obvious) and have to say which religion each one represented and why (i.e. they identify the 'clues'). Or - after studying parts of St Luke's Gospel and having found out about Luke's purposes, pupils are presented with an unfamiliar part of his text and asked to suggest what messages he was communicating. Plenty of scope here for all age groups.

8. Evaluating: well known in RE as making judgements based on arguments (e.g. quality, effectiveness, consistency) and evidence. Two processes predominate here; checking and critiquing

1. Checking involves testing for inconsistencies or fallacies e.g. does the conclusion follow from the arguments? Does the data support or disconfirm a hypothesis? Checking can be used to detect inconsistencies in a persuasive passage e.g. pupils can 'check' previous students' exam answers. Again make sure that this does not become a comprehension exercise. To avoid this, make sure that the source material and task require them to use their understanding if the issue e.g. as well as detecting inaccuracies, inconsistencies etc pupils must explain why they are inaccurate/inconsistent.

2. Critiquing involves judging the merits of a solution to a problem. There may be fewer opportunities than for checking in RE. In Biblical studies students could critique a solution/solutions to the question 'why was the tomb empty?' They could also critique solutions to ethical, moral and religious problems.

9. Creating: involves putting all the elements together to form a coherent whole. There are three processes involved: generating, planning and producing. These are applied in RE very differently compared e.g. to science and technology.

1. Generating: or hypothesising. Pupils represent a problem related to religion, ethics, belief, values etc (e.g. the problem of evil; the lack of inter-faith understanding and tolerance in a community etc. and at possible hypotheses.

2. Planning: pupils devise a plan for solving the problem. An assessment task could be to ask students to submit an outline of their solution to a given problem, including the steps they intend to follow and what resources/evidence/arguments they plan to use/look for.

3. Producing: pupils carry out the plan. These plans will usually be for an argumentative piece. However, it is possible for RE pupils to create a product to meet specifications e.g. by addressing the problem of creating a design for a church on a new estate or a mosque for a new settlement of Syrian refugees etc. In such tasks the specification should require them to use their knowledge and understanding.

6. IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER

1. Teachers will select the cognitive processes they want to use depending on their assessment objective(s). For example, if the assessment objective is to evaluate the arguments for and against the ordination of women, the tasks set will probably be in relation to 2(i),(iv), (vi); 4(i), (1ii), (viii) and 5(ii). A Y1 assessment with an assessment objective to know the main parts of a church building and understand their function and importance may draw from 1(i),(ii) and 2(ii)and (iii).

2. The important thing to remember is that we are assessing pupils' understanding of RE , NOT their ability to carry out processes and apply skills. The cognitive processes are means to end NOT ends in themselves. e.g. the outcome of an assessment is that pupils have a thorough understanding of (x aspects of) Hinduism and ways in which it is different from Christianity while having some features in common. Pupils were able to demonstrate that understanding by their execution of tasks related to 2(iii), (vi) and 4(i) and (ii).

3. Mind your language! The detailed and back-to-basics approach of LTLRE is uncovering some sloppy use of language in RE. 'Concept' is the chief culprit, with the term being used to apply to any number of things, often unrelated to research or scholarship in the domains of psychology and/or philosophy. 'Evaluation' is often used as shorthand for 'answering a question about/suggesting a solution to an issue or problem'. That is in fact what BRT refers to as creating. Evaluating is a response - as in a response/critique of a solution to a problem by oneself or another. e.g. you can't evaluate 'abortion'; you can only evaluate opinions/judgements on abortion.

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