Resources for Fostering Early Learning

How do you know if your students are achieving their learning goals? You need to collect evidence—evidence of different kinds and on different levels. It might be useful to keep in mind that gathering evidence of your students’ learning is something you have been doing for most of your academic career.

Effective approaches are those which explicitly develop awareness of learning strategies and techniques, particularly when these are targeted at the metacognitive level. The characteristics of these approaches identified by the review include:

• Structured tasks which focus on specific and explicit strategies in the subject context;
• Capacity in lessons for more effective exchanges between the learner and the teacher concerning the purpose of the activity;
• Small group interactions promoting articulation about the use of learning strategies;
• Mechanisms built into learning tasks to promote checking for mutual understanding of learning goals by peers and with the teacher;
• Enhanced opportunities for the learner to receive diagnostic feedback linked directly to the content of the task.
  We can also identify some necessary conditions for these approaches to be successful:
• The teacher needs to have good understanding of the subject, of different approaches to learning and be sensitive to the demands of different types of learners;
• Teachers should have a repertoire of practical tools and strategies to guide the learner and enhance opportunities for feedback about learning;
• Both teachers and learners should have an orientation towards learning characterized by a willingness to engage in dialogue and negotiation regarding the intent and purpose of a particular teaching and learning activity;
• The focus of learning should be on how to succeed through effort rather than ability and through the selection of appropriate strategies by the learner.

Suskie, L. (2009). Assessing student learning: A common sense guide (2^nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.