ABSTRACT
We begin by exploring the complex iteration between what teachers believe and what they do. We draw on data collected from two main sources: the first set were interviews with 37 classroom teachers, including 27 for whom the second set, video recordings of their lessons, were also analysed. The observations and interviews were undertaken around the mid-point of the project. (For a detailed description of the methods we used in analysing the data, see Marshall and Drummond, 2006.)
Black and Wiliam have argued that ‘Teachers will not take up attractive sounding ideas, albeit based on extensive research, if these are presented as general principles, which leave entirely to them the task of translating them into everyday practice’ (1998b, p. 15). For this reason, the King’s Medway Oxfordshire Formative Assessment Project (KMOFAP) model, adapted by the LHTL project, emphasised the practical procedures in training sessions with teachers and were, in effect, value-neutral in their delivery. As pointed out in Chapter 2, this is not to say that we did not anticipate change in practice bringing about changes in beliefs, but change in beliefs was not fore-grounded in the way the sessions were conceived. Instead we saw assessment for learning as a Trojan Horse (Black and Wiliam, 2006), which would, by affecting a shift in pedagogic approaches, bring about a complementary change in beliefs. The metaphor is significant. Concealed within the practices of AfL are pedagogic principles which encourage teachers to promote learner autonomy in their pupils (Marshall and Drummond, 2006). Implicit within the metaphor, then, is the idea that these principles are initially hidden from view to ensure the attendant surprise and inevitable triumph when they are finally revealed.
