Page 10 - Learning for All – A Guide to Effective Assessment and Instruction for All Students, Kindergarten to Grade 12, 2013

8 • Learning for All
Learning for All, K–12 describes educational approaches that are based on one of the most important findings of educational research since 2000 – namely, that all students learn best when instruction, resources, and the learning environment are well suited to their particular strengths, interests, needs, and stage of readiness. Like the School Effectiveness Framework (SEF), this guide focuses on ways in which teachers and/or teams of educators can plan and provide the kind of assessment and instruction that enables all students to learn best. Three elements – personalization, precision, and professional learning – are critical to the process.4
Personalization – Education that puts the learner at the centre, providing assessment and instruction that are tailored to students’ particular learning and motivational needs.
Precision – A system that links “assessment for learning” to evidence-informed instruction on a daily basis, in the service of providing instruction that is precise to the level of readiness and the learning needs of the individual student.
Professional learning – Focused, ongoing learning for every educator “in context”, to link new conceptions of instructional practice with assessment of student learning.
An education system in which these components are closely interconnected can successfully address the need to “establish classroom routines and practices that represent personalized, ongoing ‘data-driven, focused instruction’”.
(Fullan et al., 2006, pp.16–26, 87)
These three elements are represented in the School Effectiveness Framework diagram in Figure 1 on the following page, in the broader context of the “interdependent relationships that need to be considered if improvement for students is to happen in and through schools” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2013c, p. 4). The framework is designed as a tool to support reflective and informed practice and school improvement planning. Learning for All, K–12 can serve as a key resource for educators as they work to “identify areas of strength, areas requiring improvement and next steps” and collaboratively pursue “inquiry focused on student learning, achievement and well-being that informs goals and effective teaching and learning practices/strategies” – two of the key purposes of the SEF (p. 3).
4. The work of Conzemius and O’Neill (2002), Dufour (2002; 2004); Dufour and Eaker (1998), Fullan (2007), Fullan, Hill, and Crévola (2006), Reeves (2002), Schmoker (2004), Stiggins (2004), and others explores the ideas noted here. Many of these ideas are developed and integrated by Fullan et al. into a vision of an overall education system, called the Breakthrough system, that can succeed in improving student achievement. Personalization, precision, and professional learning are the three components of the Breakthrough system.