Indicators of Progression

Introduction

Standards indicating what students should know and be able to do are written at six levels. There are three intervening progress points between each level which are used for student reporting. This section provides advice to teachers to assist them in assessing student progression against the standards.

Designing for progression

Ideally, student progression should be planned for at a whole school or team level. The design of teaching programs will partly determine the type of progression that will be evidenced.

Once approach is ‘a little of a lot’. This approach means that students cover a broad range of content but may not cover this in as much depth. Students would then usually come back and learn more at a later date and build depth over time. Students would be likely to progress consistently across all elements of the standards over time.

A second approach is ‘a lot of a little’. This approach covers only several elements of a standard as an in-depth unit, or where domains like History, Geography and Economics are taught as separate units. Students would not cover this information at a later date and so they would be expected to have progressed to the standard by the end of the unit.

It is easier to assess student progression when it is considered in the unit design process. Tasks designed to allow students to demonstrate different levels of achievement make it easier for the teacher to assess progression.

Questions to consider when designing units include “What is the quality of work that I would expect my students to produce for this task? or “Does this task allow students to demonstrate their current level of knowledge and skills?”

Ways to measure progress

The following examples illustrate different ways progression can be measured. The most appropriate method would depend on the structure of the teaching program and the nature of the content and skills being assessed.

Complexity
A student can show progression through the complexity of their responses. For domains like History where students undertake independent research, the complexity of a student’s response is a good indicator of progression. Discussion should occur within each school about the type of complexity that is representative of different levels of student work.

Originality
Students can show progression through their level of automaticity to complete a task. At the .25 level, a student may require demonstration and support from the teacher to complete the task. At the .5 level, a student may be able to complete the task using templates and models. At the .75 level, the student may be able to complete the task by referring to past examples. The student would demonstrate attainment of the standard when they could complete the task without any support.

Coverage
The depth of coverage shown in a student’s work can be used to assess progression. For example, at Level 5 in Science students are expected to explain the structure and function of cells. A student who can label the parts of a cell may be working at 4.25. A student who can explain the role of one or two parts of a cell may be working at 4.5. At 4.75, a student may be able to describe the function of the different parts of a cell. A student may be at the standard if they can explain why the structure of the cell enables it to perform its function.

Automaticity
Automaticity is the ability to perform a task automatically. For example, the recall of multiplication tables appears in the Mathematics Level 3 standards. At 2.25, a student may need to rely on concrete materials such as counters to perform their calculations. At 2.5, a student might be able to perform multiplications using the numbers 1, 2, 5 and 10 and need support for the other numbers. At 2.75, a student might be able to recall single-digit multiplications for the majority of numbers. A student would be at the standard when they can recall all single-digit multiplications.

Accuracy
The accuracy in which students complete work can be used as an indicator of progression. An example of this is written work in LOTE. Student work with a large number of grammatical and spelling errors could be at the .25 level. As the number of errors reduce, the student would progress through .5 and .75 until their writing was grammatically correct which would be at the standard.

Cognition
Cognition is the thinking underlying the completion of a task. For example, for Design, Creativity and Technology Level 4, students reflect on their designs and justify their design choices. Whilst working towards the standard, at 3.25, a student’s response might be “I chose these colours as they are from my favourite football team.” At 3.5, a student’s response might be “I chose these colours because they are attention grabbing.” At 3.75, a student’s response might be “I chose these colours because they appeal to the target audience.” A student’s response at the standard could be “I chose these colours as they make people feel happy and they would be more likely to buy the product.”

Completeness
The level of completeness ******

Frequency
How often a student can demonstrate attainment of a standard is a valid indicator of progression. In Mathematics, a student attempting a particular type of question who can complete only one or two questions correctly may be at the .25 level. As their ability to complete these type of questions improves, they would progress through the .5 and .75 levels and would attain the standard if they consistently get that type of question correct.