Two years ago, I began writing a practical guide to formative assessment. I believed there was value in revisiting the original research, summarising it accessibly, and showing how it could be put into practice. I took my title from Dylan Wiliam’s often-cited suggestion that it was a big mistake to:
Call formative assessment formative assessment rather than something like ‘responsive teaching'”
Calling it ‘responsive teaching’ seemed to offer a fresh start – more than just a rehash of Assessment for Learning – and to emphasise the goal: responsiveness to students’ needs, not just a bunch of techniques. So, I began with:
Idea 1: Responsive teaching = formative assessment
But, my understanding of what responsive teaching is, and why it matters, has changed during those two years.
Incorporating cognitive science
As I wrote, cognitive science came to seem increasingly important to responsive teaching. Firstly, because critics have highlighted the limitations of formative assessment which focuses on general skills and techniques, and overlooks what students are thinking about and the importance of domain-specific knowledge (Bennett, 2011; Coffey et al., 2011). Cognitive science helped me focus on what students were to learn, and offered valuable guidance in the importance of setting clear objectives and planning learning carefully (more on this here). This may not sound ‘responsive’, but we can only respond meaningfully to students’ progress if we have a clear goal towards which they are progressing.
Secondly, cognitive science provided a robust evidence base which – in places – formative assessment seemed to lack. I found fewer rigorous studies of formative assessment strategies than I had expected; but I found numerous studies in cognitive science, many of which showed the value of formative assessment techniques. For example, I found very few studies testing sharing learning intentions, but I found numerous experiments which tested sharing models to show students what success looks like (I’ll discuss this in a future post). Cognitive science offered some rigorous tests for some of the key ideas in formative assessment.
Cognitive science offered help planning learning and evidence underpinning key ideas; this could be combined powerfully with two decades’ practical experience from formative assessment. My formulation became:
Idea 2: Responsive teaching = cognitive science + formative assessment
This was perfect, but for one crucial, missing element.
Understanding responsiveness
What about the title? What is ‘responsiveness’, and why does it matter? I submitted the manuscript for Responsive Teaching to my publisher in November. I stumbled upon research addressing this question only in March, too late to include in the book. Harry Reis reviewed the development of ‘relationship science’, and defined responsiveness as the feeling that we are interacting with someone who is: “cognizant of, sensitive to, and behaviorally supportive of the self (2007, p.9)”. This maps fairly clearly to responsive teaching:
- “Cognizant of” – aware of how students are: what have they understood? Where are they stuck? What do they need?
- “Sensitive to” – caring about how students are doing; accepting that missteps and misconceptions are inevitable in learning and that it is our duty as teachers to help students beyond them
- “Behaviorally supportive” – taking steps to support students: adapting teaching to meet their needs.
Why does responsive teaching matter?
I had believed there were two reasons for pursuing responsive teaching:
- Cognitive science shows the value of clear objectives and carefully planned learning
- Formative assessment suggests the value of identifying what students have learned and adapting accordingly
Reis convinced me of something more. He suggests that perceived responsiveness is the “central organizing principle” in understanding relationships. People who believe they are interacting with someone responsive tend to feel better and do better. Most of Reis’s examples relate to interactions in private life, but he finds the same principle at work among medical patients, who do better if they perceive their doctors to be responsive. Reis distinguishes between:
- Responsiveness – which improves relationships
- Unresponsiveness – which worsens them, and
- Blindly offering care – which is egoistical for the giver, and does not improve relationships.
For teachers, awareness of exactly what students need, and responsiveness to this – rather than indiscriminately providing support – is therefore critical. So, responsiveness can help us both to support students and to improve our relationships with them.
Conclusion
Responsive teaching therefore combines:
- An evidence base from cognitive science
- Two decades experience from formative assessment
- The ‘central organising principle’ of relationships
So my working definition – responsive teaching is:
- Setting clear goals and planning learning carefully
- Identifying what students have understood and where they are struggling
- Responding, adapting our teaching to support students to do better.
If you found this interesting, you might like…
The book: Responsive Teaching: Cognitive Science and Formative Assessment in Practice.
This post, applying cognitive science to planning: planning lessons using cognitive load theory.
This post, on a crucial approach to formative assessment: using exit tickets to assess and plan.
References
Bennett, R. (2011). Formative assessment: a critical review. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 18(1), pp.5-25.
I think this is person-centered teaching, as in therapy by Carl Rogers.