Getting started with
Assessment for Learning in Science

Introduction

The purpose of this guide is to look in more depth at how Assessment for Learning (AfL) can be used successfully in the subject of Science. It builds on Getting Started with Assessment for Learning and focuses on some practical AfL strategies for Science lessons that you can use and adapt. This guide will also provide an excellent starting point for you to reflect on how you can use AfL successfully in your own classroom practice.

The glossary explains some of the terms used in this guide.

Why is AfL particularly important for science education?

The complex nature of science can introduce challenges for learners as well as science teachers.

Science is made up of an incredibly large database of facts, concepts and theories. Only a subset of this is found in school science syllabuses.
Scientific knowledge evolves over time and depends on the evidence that scientists currently have. Science is therefore ongoing – we do not yet have the answers to all questions, or solutions to all problems!
Science is found in all aspects of our everyday lives, which means you and your learners may bring different values and beliefs into the classroom. You may also find that learners have misconceptions about science.
Science has its own language, which can be challenging to understand and use to communicate scientific concepts accurately, regardless of whether you are learning it in a first, second or other language.
Science has its own conventions, such as the methods and processes used to test theories and collect data. Understanding the nature of practical work, as well as developing hands-on practical skills, is a key aspect of science education.

According to Winterbottom and de Winter in Approaches to learning and teaching Science: a toolkit for international teachers, “Science is more than just facts … Some students may see Science as a fixed body of facts and rules that describe and explain how the world works, thinking that learning and applying them leads to success. However, Science is more than this: it is a way of thinking, of approaching problems, asking questions and finding the right way to answer them. A look at Science as a discipline can provide a starting point to promote all the metacognitive strategies we wish students to develop. This is a complex and contested area, but a simplified view of the nature of Science considers three connected domains … knowledge, methods and ways of knowing.”

Diagram adapted from The Nature of Science image (Winterbottom and de Winter, 2017. p59)

As science is such a complex subject, learning demands tend to be high (Leach and Scott, 2002). This means that learners are expected to have and use a large amount of knowledge across several topics. In this guide, we share a number of AfL strategies to help you support your learners to overcome the learning demands often faced in science lessons.

Reflection

This first activity asks you to reflect on the three AfL questions and information you have just read.

When teaching science, ask yourself the following questions.

How do you establish where your learners are going?
How do you find out where they currently are in their learning? How often do you do this?
How do you respond to the evidence you gather about their learning?

Watch this video of ideas about why AfL is important in Science lessons.

Transcript

Using AfL in Science

In this section we are going to look at five areas of AfL and some strategies you can use to include these in your science lessons.

Sharing learning goals and success criteria so that learners know and understand what is expected of them and what successful work looks like

“I have walked into many science classrooms and asked students what they were doing, only to be told something like “page 34”, as if that were all I needed to know.” (Wiliam, 2008 p.10)

Learning goals must be clear. This is a key aspect of AfL and relates to one of the three key questions – ‘Where is the learner going?’. Normally, as you are the teacher, you have a very clear idea of where your learners are going and what success will look like. However, learners often do not share this understanding.

Curriculum documents are normally aimed at the teacher. This means that the learning objectives are often written in a way that is not very accessible for learners. So it is not always helpful to share objectives from a syllabus without adapting them so that they make sense to your learners.

Consider the following curriculum objective.

‘Make predictions for what will happen based on scientific knowledge and understanding, and suggest and communicate how to test these.’

The objective does not give a clear indication of what success would look like.

To help learners understand what is expected, you can work with them to produce success criteria. For example, if you are going to ask your learners to write a method to meet part of the above learning objective, you could make up a poor method. Showing your learners what happens when you try to use the method can lead to a discussion that helps them identify how they can write a successful method, rather than you telling them. Learners actively construct understanding their own understanding, so your success criteria should be in a language that your learners understand. You can use questioning and dialogic teaching (see the next section) to guide their thinking.

Did the beaker overflow? Why?
Was it clear what equipment to use? Why or why not?
Why did the Bunsen burner not heat the liquid? What would the method need to include?
Why did I not do the steps in the right order?

Sharing success criteria will help learners to understand what successful work looks like. Modelling tasks, showing examples of both good and poorer pieces of work and ranking pieces of work, all help learners to understand what success will look like.

Developing a shared understanding of learning goals and success criteria is the foundation of successful AfL. If both you and your learners know where they should be heading, feedback and questions are more likely to help them to meet the success criteria. Success criteria can also be used as a basis for learners to assess themselves and their peers.

Reflection

Consider the learning objective, ‘Present results in drawings, bar charts and tables’.

Think about the following.

What might your learners do to meet this learning objective?
What might a list of success criteria include?
How would you share the success criteria with your learners?
How would you check that the success criteria made sense to your learners?

2. Planning effective classroom discussions using questioning and dialogic teaching

Dialogic teaching – often referred to as classroom talk – can take place between you and your learners, but also between learners. Using talk to support learning in science has been well documented (for example, Wellington and Osborne, 1998; Mercer, Dawes, and Staarman, 2009). In fact, Harlen (2006, p.167) believes talk is a ‘key feature of scientific activity and of teaching science’.

Questioning and dialogic teaching are incredibly effective for gathering evidence of learning as part of AfL in science (Bell and Cowie, 2000; Wiliam, 2008).

As we saw in the introduction to this guide, science is incredibly complex. Learners often bring misconceptions into the science classroom. The University of York Science Education Group (UK) carried out research into the use of diagnostic questions. This type of questioning helps you to identify how much your learners understand about specific, and often tricky, scientific concepts. It also shows you whether your learners have misconceptions about science and what these are. Importantly, the use of diagnostic questions was found to be flexible (Millar and Hames, 2003). Diagnostic questions can assess prior knowledge and understanding and can be adapted for the purpose of any lesson. This supports the first recommendation from the Improving Secondary Science Guidance Report – to build on the ideas that learners bring to lessons (Education Endowment Foundation 2018). Teachers also find that diagnostic questions can encourage open discussion between learners (Millar and Hames, 2003) during lessons. They can also be used after teaching as hinge questions to quickly check the whole class understands before moving on to the next part of the lesson.

For more information on hinge questions, see our guide ‘Getting started with effective questioning’.

To make diagnostic questioning a part of AfL, it is important that you consider the evidence you collect about your learners’ learning. For example, ask yourself if you should move on with the lesson as all learners understand the concepts. Or, if some learners are still struggling, you could decide to pair up those who understand with those who are still unsure, and ask them to complete a task together.

Want more ideas? This article from Best Evidence Science Teaching (BEST) has suggestions of different formats and approaches for using diagnostic questions.

Watch this video of ideas about effective AfL strategies in Science lessons:

Transcript

You could also use ‘concept cartoons’ to encourage discussion and use dialogic teaching. Concept cartoons are based on the theory that learners relate new learning to their current understanding and knowledge (Naylor and Keogh, 1999). The cartoons link everyday situations to the real world by presenting views from different characters. This encourages your learners to consider what they think.

https://edu.rsc.org/resources/science-concept-cartoons-condensation/1869.article

You can use concept cartoons in a number of ways. One way is through a think, pair, share activity, where you can try presenting a cartoon on the board to the whole class. Ask your learners to spend a couple of minutes thinking about the cartoon. Then ask them to turn to their neighbour and discuss their thoughts for a few minutes as a pair. Next, invite everyone to share their ideas with a larger group or the whole class. By discussing the concept cartoon with their peers, your learners will start to deepen their scientific understanding and practise communicating this through talk. You can move round the classroom during the pair-and-share discussions to get an idea of learners’ levels of understanding. This will help you to think of appropriate questions and feedback that will help learners meet their learning goals.

Watch this video of James de Winter talking about the effective use of concept cartoons.

Transcript

Taking time to plan questions and opportunities for dialogic teaching and purposeful talk into your science lessons will help you to incorporate AfL. You will have a clearer understanding of the purpose of the lesson activities, what evidence you will be able to collect about learners’ progress, and how you could respond to this evidence.

3. Effective ways of giving feedback and helping learners move forward

Feedback is a vital feature of AfL. It provides learners with next steps based on where they are in their learning and where they need to get to. Research shows that feedback can have a very big and positive effect on learners’ achievement (Hattie, 2012) if it focuses on how to improve (Kluger and DeNisi, 1996) and causes learners to think or do something with the feedback (Wiliam, 2011). The EEF (2018) recommends using structured feedback in science lessons to help learners make progress with their thinking.

You can give feedback through written marking, but if grades appear with comments, research suggests that your learners will only take note of the grade you give them (Black and Harrison, 2001). To prevent this, consider using comment-only marking. You can tell your learner what they have done well, and then suggest what they can do to improve it. Give them time to do this, either in the lesson or as homework.

If a learner cannot understand your marking comments, perhaps due to the scientific language used, the effect of your feedback may be lost. Providing verbal feedback in lessons is often an efficient and effective way to overcome this challenge. You can give verbal feedback immediately to certain individuals, but also to small groups of learners or the whole class. For example, if learners are drawing force diagrams, you can move round the classroom and help them learn by providing feedback such as the following.

What equipment could you use so that your lines are straight?
Make sure you have represented the size of the force by drawing your arrows to scale – what do I mean by ‘to scale’?
You haven’t yet shown the direction of the force. Think about how you could do this on your diagram.

Feedback does not have to be specific to a particular task. General feedback that learners can use in other areas of their science learning can also be beneficial. Feedback can also encourage self-regulation and self-evaluation.

This table gives some examples related to science education.

Education Endowment Foundation 'Improving Secondary Science. Page 39

Reflection

Perhaps you already use feedback in your science lessons? Bell and Cowie (2001) found that science teachers gave feedback tacitly (where it is just implied, rather than explicitly presented as part of formative assessment). However, it is important that you can very clearly identify the parts of your teaching practice that have an impact, so that you can continue to refine them and build on your success. Based on what you have read above, reflect on the following questions.

When do you provide feedback to learners?
What form do you give feedback in – verbal, written or both?
What types of feedback do you provide?

Do you want to improve your feedback practice further? Take a look at this self-study module.

As part of AfL, plan opportunities to give your learners feedback, and remember to give them time to act on that feedback.

4. Helping learners assess their own and others’ learning

As well as providing structured feedback and building on the ideas that learners bring to lessons, the EEF also recommends that science learning can be improved if teachers help learners to direct their own learning (2018). The benefits of learners assessing their own and others’ work are also highlighted in the NFER’s reviews of AfL practice (Hodgson, 2010; Hodgson and Pyle, 2010) and the work of Dylan Wiliam (2008).

A simple way to encourage your learners to self-assess could be to focus on the language of science. When beginning a topic such as food chains, you might ask learners to assess what they currently understand about the topic’s key words by using a ‘traffic light’ system. For example, in the table below, learners may class the word ’producer’ as red if they do not yet understand the word. If they fully understood the word ‘predator’ they might class it as green. Any words they have some confidence with might be classed as orange. At the end of the topic, learners can return to the list of key words and change colours if appropriate.

This approach helps learners to see where they have made progress and where they can focus their future efforts. It can also help learners to develop metacognitive skills. For more information on metacognition, see our Getting Started with Metacognition guide.

Reflection: Can you think of any other science topics that are rich in key words and where you could encourage self-assessment in a similar way?

In teachthought’s examples of feedback for learning , example 5 suggests how you can use self-assessment to support learners to develop key skills as well as knowledge. The example task asks learners to prepare a mock TV newscast to discuss pollution. The task suggests using a rubric to scaffold self-assessment. Rubrics are similar to marking schemes and encourage learners to assess the parts of the task which relate to learning, rather than, for example, giving feedback about the neatness of handwriting.

Chapter 6 of Butler et al’s ‘How to Assess Student Performance in Science’ (2005) article gives more detailed information about what to consider when using rubrics. It also provides a range of examples of different aspects of science education that you could use rubrics for.

You can use peer assessment for other, non-written tasks. For example, your learners could work in pairs or a small group to carry out a short practical task or investigation. Give one part of the investigation to each member of the group to carry out. While they do this, ask the other members to watch, ask questions and provide feedback to help the learner do this part of the experiment successfully. This will support your learners to take part in scientific talk with one another and give each other feedback, as well as reflect critically on their peers’ approach to the task.

Watch this video of peer assessment in an Australian science lesson:

Ask yourself the following questions.

How did the teacher organise the peer-assessment task?
What other aspects of AfL can you spot in this video clip?
What strategies could you use in your own classroom?

The Black and Harrison (2001) study emphasised that it takes time to train and support learners to assess themselves and their peers effectively in science lessons. However, the teachers in the study said that the investment in time and energy was worthwhile, as it made learners more independent and helped build a classroom where students are actively learning.

When starting out with self- and peer-assessment, the best advice is to start simply and go slowly. For example, start by asking your learners to mark multiple-choice diagnostic tests which have one correct response. Once you find that they are comfortable with this, perhaps ask them to mark cloze exercises on the correct use of key scientific terminology, setting themselves ‘next steps’ targets or providing feedback for a peer.

Eventually your learners will develop the skills to assess and give feedback on questions which have longer answers, such as those in exams, or use more complicated rubrics. When learners start to mark longer or more complex answers, they may have difficulty in interpreting science marking schemes, due to unfamiliar conventions or vocabulary. Model the process of marking, clearly talking your learners through it and showing them how you are arriving at your judgement so that they can learn how to assess themselves and each other productively.

5. Using summative assessment formatively to help learners improve

Clymer and Wiliam state that ‘to be effective, assessment for learning must be integrated into assessment of learning systems’ (2007, p.1). Their article shares a case study where a science teacher assesses learners’ lab skills across a whole year by using the traffic light system. Importantly, the teacher took time to discuss progress with their learners, telling them the steps they could take to improve. The learners were positive about the process and started to look for opportunities for feedback more actively, rather than focus only on the grade of the summative assessment. This example shows how you can use summative assessments formatively so that they become a part of AfL in science lessons.

It is useful for you to note which questions learners answer incorrectly in a written test or exam. However, exam wrappers can help your learners to recognise that exams can support their learning, not just provide a grade. Exam wrappers encourage learners to look back at their marked paper and reflect on which topics they did well on, and where they were less successful. This helps to develop their metacognitive skills. Exam wrappers can also be designed to guide learners to reflect on their approach to the exam, such as preparation time and revision techniques. When exam wrappers are used over time, you can encourage learners to start to spot themes. For example, can they improve their use of scientific terminology or are they finding it difficult to apply maths to science learning? Learners can then start to set their own targets, for example:

in future I will make sure that I write down the equation I am using and show my working when answering a question where I apply my maths knowledge to a science question; and
in future I will answer every question in the paper and give it a try, even if I am not 100% sure of the answer.

The role of exam wrappers in assessment for learning and some examples of exam wrappers are shared in this blog.

Another fun way to involve your learners with summative assessments is to use two-stage exams. Learners take a test individually, then before they receive their marked test or self-assess it, they do the test again in a small group. You should only give each group one test paper so they have to discuss the answers and decide together on the most appropriate answer. The main aims of two-stage exams are to scaffold constructive conversation between peers and to help them to build on existing understanding, use summative assessment formatively and use feedback to support learning.

An example of two-stage exams is given here. Although this example is from university science teaching, the ideas apply to schools too.

Summative assessment is a natural part of science education. However, try to plan how you can use it to improve your learners’ progress. The shift from learners focusing on grades towards formative use of summative assessment can take time. Taking small steps, modelling the process and clearly sharing the reasons why you would like learners to take part in summative assessments in this way will help them to recognise the benefits of this approach.

Case study

Context

Miss Khan is teaching Chemistry to her lower secondary learners. They are studying properties of materials and are working towards the following curriculum learning objective.

‘Use indicators (including a universal indicator and litmus) to distinguish between acidic, alkaline and neutral solutions.’

Aim

Recently, Miss Khan noticed that her learners seemed very good at following instructions and doing practical work. However, she was less sure that the practical activities were supporting her learners’ scientific understanding.

Through recently taking part in professional development, Miss Khan had learnt about the Getting Practical project and Millar and Abrahams’ framework for evaluating the effectiveness of practical work (2009). This framework suggests that the effectiveness of practical work can be measured by assessing whether learners:

did what the teacher expected (effectiveness 1); and
learnt what the teacher intended when they did the practical work (effectiveness 2).

Practical work: making it more effective. Robin Millar and Ian Abrahams, 2009

Miss Khan felt that the practical investigations were meeting effectiveness 1 but not effectiveness 2. She was keen to use the idea of ‘hands on and minds on’ (Millar and Abrahams, 2009) during practical work. She knew she would have to start establishing AfL and assess her learners during practical lessons to see whether learning was taking place.

What was done and did learning happen?

Miss Khan planned the lesson by reflecting on the three AfL questions.

- Where are the learners now?

- Where are they going?

- How are they going to get there?

To be able to assess how near her learners were to their goals, and provide relevant feedback, it was important that Miss Khan clearly identified the learning goals. Based on the curriculum objective, she decided that, by the end of the practical lesson, learners should:

- state the colour that a universal indicator (UI) turns in acidic, alkaline and neutral solutions; and

- be able to determine whether an unknown solution is acidic, alkaline or neutral.

The lesson was designed so that learners carried out practical work to actively learn about the colour of UI in different solutions. Learners would be successful if they could correctly state the colour that UI turns in acidic, alkaline and neutral solutions and correctly identify the property of the unknown solution. Miss Khan began the lesson by sharing these success criteria with her learners. The criteria were displayed throughout the lesson. Learners were then given a method to follow.

Before the learners started the practical work, Miss Khan modelled the practical method so that they understood what was expected. At random, she selected learners to tell her how to do the experiment so that she knew they had been listening and watching her. Once she was confident that the learners knew what to do, they were allowed to get their equipment and start the practical work.

Once the practical part of the lesson started, Miss Khan went around the classroom. She listened to learners’ conversations and watched what they were doing. This helped her to see which learners knew what they were doing and what they were learning, as well as which learners needed support or redirection.

Miss Khan: ‘So, tell me what you are doing?’

Student 1: ‘We are putting this liquid in this thing here and then adding the universal indicator.’

Miss Khan: ‘OK, so you’re adding the solution to the dimple tile and then adding the indicator. Why are you doing that?’

Student 2: ‘To see what colour it goes.’

Miss Khan: ‘Good. You’ll find out what colour the indicator changes. But why do you want to know this?’

Student 1: ‘Erm, I’m not sure.’

Student 2: ‘Me neither. Maybe to know if the indicator is working?’

This short exchange showed Miss Khan that the learners were able to follow the instructions and were doing what they were expected to do (effectiveness 1) but that they weren’t relating this to the lesson’s learning goals and success criteria. The conversation continued as follows.

Miss Khan: ‘Well, what are we learning about today? If you have forgotten, take a look at the board to remind yourselves of today’s success criteria...’

Student 3: ‘Oh, I remember now. We are finding out about acidic and neutral things. And how they change colour. And alkl...alak...that one too. I don’t know how to say it.’

Miss Khan: ‘Alkaline.’

Student 1: ‘Yeah, so by using the indicator liquid stuff we can work out what colour it will go if we add an acid to it. That’s why we have bottles labelled acid, alkali and neutral. We can find out the colour of UI for each of them.’

Student 2: ‘I understand now! If we can work that out then when we do the experiment with liquid from the mystery bottle, the colour it goes will help. It will make the universal stuff turn a certain colour if it is acidic...but a different colour if it is neutral.’

Gathering evidence of learning by asking simple questions and encouraging talk with and between learners quickly helped Miss Khan to find out how learners were progressing with the practical task and how much learning was happening – hands on and minds on. When learners were not linking the ‘doing’ of the practical work with the learning, Miss Khan could direct them back to the success criteria by asking simple questions. The practical task then became associated with learning (effectiveness 2), not just doing.

Once the learners had completed the practical work, they returned to their seats and Miss Khan gave each of them a mini whiteboard. She asked the following question to assess their learning against the lesson’s success criteria: ‘What property does the unknown substance have (acidic, alkaline or neutral) and how do you know?’ Every learner wrote their answer on their whiteboard. After a couple of minutes Miss Khan asked all learners to hold up their whiteboards at the same time. By quickly scanning the responses she saw that most learners had correctly identified that the unknown substance was acidic. However, a lot of learners had not included any reasoning. Miss Khan asked the learners to fully answer the question and explain how they had reached their conclusion. If they had already included this explanation, she asked them to add a reason why they knew it wasn’t one of the other types of substance. This time, many more learners included their reasoning on their whiteboard. Miss Khan chose a good example to share with the whole class, explaining why it was a good answer.

‘Philippe has written: ‘When we added acid to UI it turned red. I think that the unknown substance is acidic because when UI was added it also turned red.’ This answer is really good because it clearly explains the reason for Philippe’s conclusion and relates it to the experiment.’

Miss Khan asked the learners to clean their whiteboards, ready to answer some more questions (as in the list below) to help her get more evidence of learning.

1. If UI turns green, is the solution that was added to it acidic, alkaline or neutral?

2. What colour would UI turn if I added an acidic solution to it?

3. What would I conclude about a substance that turned UI purple?

If any learner wrote an incorrect answer, Miss Khan immediately saw who it was. She also saw whether everyone in the class had trouble answering a specific question. She was able to give the following verbal feedback immediately to help learners to correct any misunderstandings.

‘...but didn’t you all find out that neutral substances turned UI green...? So, if I added an acidic solution to UI, do you think it would turn green? Why or why not?’

By ending the lesson with questions related to the lesson’s success criteria and involving the whole class, Miss Khan could see whether all of her learners had met the criteria. She gave immediate feedback to help learners correct any misunderstandings. Encouraging learners to talk to her and to each other also helped Miss Khan to direct learners to think about their own and each other’s answers in order to develop their scientific reasoning skills.

AfL summary

Miss Khan used AfL in the lesson by:

- clearly identifying success criteria and sharing these with the learners – everyone knew where they were going;

- gathering evidence of learning through questioning and conversation between individuals and with the whole class; and

- providing regular, verbal feedback in response to the evidence she gained. The feedback helped learners move closer towards meeting the success criteria.

What would Miss Khan do differently next time?

Miss Khan had gathered evidence that showed learners had met the lesson’s success criteria and she was confident that her learners had made progress. She now fully recognised the importance of using practical work to connect observables (hands on) with ideas (minds on) (Millar and Abrahams, 2009) and consider both levels of effectiveness. She was glad that she had started to develop her AfL practice so that learners could learn from practical work as well as do practical work.

Despite these successes, Miss Khan reflected that there were some things that she would do differently next time.

Miss Khan did most of the work to find out whether learners had met the success criteria. Next time she would help her learners to reflect on their own progress. For example, at the end of the lesson she could include a quick activity where learners would use smiley, neutral or sad faces to show how confident they felt with each success criteria.

Miss Khan would also plan questions in advance. When she was moving round the classroom, and at the end of the lesson, she knew she wanted to ask questions to encourage conversation, but she wasn't sure exactly what she was going to ask. By taking time to plan questions, she would make sure that conversation supported learning effectively.

The learners had been introduced to the terms acidic, alkaline and neutral as properties of solutions in their previous lesson. They had not been introduced to universal indicators as a way to distinguish between these properties. During the practical, Miss Khan recognised that some learners were still struggling with these key words. In future, she would start this practical lesson by recapping previous learning. This would help her to find out whether learners could remember and comfortably use the terms acidic, alkaline and neutral, which was important for this lesson. For example, she might use a very short cloze exercise as a starter activity and then ask learners to assess their own work.

Reflection and next steps

Now that you have come to the end of the guide, reflect again on your own practice. Think about what you have learnt and how this will affect your teaching practice.

Strengths

1. What do you think you already do well in terms of using AfL in your science teaching practice? What are your strengths?

2. How do you already use AfL to support key areas that are specifically relevant to science education (addressing the demands of scientific language, developing learners’ practical skills and identifying and overcoming learners’ misconceptions)?

Common challenges

Watch this video of opinions about some of the challenges faced by Science teachers:

Transcript

Improving practice

1. What do you think you could do to improve your use of the three key questions of the AfL process?

How could you improve on establishing where your learners are going?
How could you improve on finding out where learners currently are in relation to the learning goals? How often might you need to do this?
How could you improve your responses to the evidence you collect about your learners’ learning?

2. How could you improve the effectiveness of specific AfL practices in science lessons?

How effectively do you share learning goals and success criteria with your learners? How could you improve this?
How effectively do you use questioning and dialogic teaching in supporting learners to make progress with their scientific understanding and skills development? How could you improve this?

How effectively do you use formative feedback to support learners to develop their scientific understanding and skills development? How could you improve this?
How effectively do learners assess their own and each other’s learning? How could you improve this?
How effectively do you use summative assessments formatively? How could you improve this?

Once you have identified an area of your AfL practice to focus on, it is helpful to write an action plan. You can plan the next steps for improving your practice, set meaningful and realistic targets, and think about how you will evaluate the effect of your actions. Take a look at the Professional Development Education Brief to remind yourself of the benefits of continuing professional development. The Getting Started with Evaluating Impact and the Getting started with Reflective Practice guides are also helpful for reminding you how you might go about reflecting on, developing and evaluating the effect of changes you make to your science teaching practice after reading this guide. Cambridge Schools also have access to Resource Plus on the School Support Hub, which includes a range of resources and videos to support the teaching and learning of Science.

Consider whether you could share what you have learnt today with others. For example, could you work with a colleague who teaches science at the same level as you and support each other to act on what you have learnt? Perhaps there is an opportunity for a joint plan to improve AfL across science teaching (for example, making sure that all science lessons have clear success criteria). It can take time to achieve consistency, but once everyone uses AfL fully in their teaching practice you could then move on to providing effective feedback.

Whatever action you take, good luck and remember that AfL is integrated into teaching and learning. It often requires changes to routines and ways of working for both you and your learners – all of which have a positive effect on learning. However, don’t expect to achieve a big impact overnight. Stick with it and keep reflecting so that you can tweak your AfL approaches until they work for your lessons and your learners.

Introduction

Why is AfL particularly important for science education?

Using AfL in Science

Case study

Reflection and next steps

Further reading