ABSTRACT
In order for students to learn through the process of assessment, feedback should not merely consist of diagnostic or evaluative information transmitted from teachers to their students; rather, students should be actively involved in seeking, generating, making sense of, and applying feedback information to support their learning. In UK schools, these outcomes are increasingly being facilitated by a process called “Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time”, or “DIRT”. The premise of DIRT is that students are most likely to learn through assessment if given the opportunity within class time to reflect upon and apply feedback comments to improve their work.
This chapter explores the use of DIRT as a strategy for assessment-as-learning. We present data from a survey of teachers and a small-scale implementation of DIRT in seven different subjects in a Sixth Form College in the United Kingdom. Taken together, the findings indicate that common DIRT practices implemented by teachers support the development of key “recipience skills” that facilitate learning through engagement with feedback. The findings also shed light on some of the challenges relevant to implementation of these approaches. We end by exploring the potential of DIRT as a form of assessment-as-learning, and argue for the importance of research conducted in partnership between researchers and teachers in advancing evidence-based practices in educational settings.
