What is moderation?
Moderation: being confident about teacher judgments
Comparable assessment judgments result from teachers comparing their assessments with an agreed matrix, progression or specific assessment characteristics and agreeing on a level or ‘standard’.
What principles guide moderation?
Moderation is most effective when:
Moderation leads to consistency
Moderation leads to comparability
Moderation and equity
What purposes can moderation serve in supporting consistency in teacher judgement?
Benefits:
The benefits of involving students in assessment
The benefits of moderation - for teachers
The benefits of moderation - for leadership teams and Boards of Trustees
Skills required for moderation and building a supportive learning culture:
- Moderation is the process of teachers sharing their expectations and understandings of standards with each other in order to improve the consistency of their decisions about student learning and achievement.
- Moderation helps teachers to either confirm or adjust their initial judgments. The process involves teachers sharing evidence of learning and collaborating to establish a shared understanding of what quality of evidence looks like. Schools use moderation to increase dependability of teacher judgments.
- "Moderation is concerned with the consistency, comparability and fairness of professional judgements about the levels demonstrated by students."
- The Australian curriculum support consistency of judgment and moderation by providing examples and illustrations of the standard required.
Moderation: being confident about teacher judgments
Comparable assessment judgments result from teachers comparing their assessments with an agreed matrix, progression or specific assessment characteristics and agreeing on a level or ‘standard’.
- What do you compare your judgments against? (for example, PAT norms; school expectations of the year level; experience of this year level)
- Would other teachers, or students, agree with your judgments? How do you know?
- How can moderation strengthen confidence in teachers’ judgments?
What principles guide moderation?
Moderation is most effective when:
- it is conducted in a spirit of professional learning and quality improvement (expect some dissonance)
- teachers (inside moderators) have appropriate knowledge of content area, assessment practices, and policies and procedures
- it is carried out regularly
- it is begun at the planning stage - prior to teaching and assessment (ensuring teachers share understandings about important learning and indicators of it)
- appropriate assessment tasks are decided on, or designed, aligned to actual learning
- equivalent assessments are agreed, when desired, for cross-class or cross-school comparisons (for example, cluster groups of schools for professional development purposes)
- moderation processes lead to improved learning and assessment
- moderators outside of the school (for example, clusters of schools, facilitators, invited teachers from other schools) may be periodically involved to give independent feedback.
Moderation leads to consistency
- There is a need for consistency (of teacher judgments and overall teacher judgments):
- over time – same evidence viewed at different times leading to same judgment by same teacher
- against benchmarks or standards – equivalent application across different types of evidence
- by a teacher
- between teachers – within same school and different schools.
- Moderation leads to interpreting and applying levels or standards in equivalent ways, and confirming teachers’ judgments about their students’ work.
Moderation leads to comparability
- The focus of comparability is on the assessable performance, not on the assessment task.
- Students can be set different tasks or tests but demonstrate a common standard of performance.
- While surface features of the performance may differ, the “characteristics of the knowledge, understanding and skills expected for the level of achievement will be equivalent.”
Moderation and equity
- Equity for moderation means that every student has the opportunity to demonstrate their current capability compared with a benchmark or performance standard.
- Opportunity can be idiosyncratic, because common assessment tasks do not necessarily enable each student to perform optimally – for example, a writing task about experiences of sport will exclude some students.
- Characteristics of task and context are important.
What purposes can moderation serve in supporting consistency in teacher judgement?
- Develop shared or common interpretations of standards and expectations of what constitutes achievement of syllabus standards
- Develop shared understandings of what students’ achievements look like
- Develop accuracy and reliability in making judgements
- Ensure judgements are equitable in terms of implications for student learning
- Strengthen the value of teachers’ judgements
- Inform well-targeted teaching programs
- Make judgements in relation to syllabus standards
Benefits:
The benefits of involving students in assessment
- When students are actively involved they can participate in selecting evidence (for example, samples of their work) that best demonstrate the intended learning outcomes.
- The process of assessment develops students’ understanding of the desired outcomes and success criteria.
- Making judgments is closely linked to developing the skills of self and peer-assessment.
- This can lead to shared expectations of learning and understandings of standards between teachers and students.
- Students develop greater confidence in teacher judgments.
- Greater transparency of the assessment process is provided for students.
The benefits of moderation - for teachers
- Brings together collective wisdom, resulting in greater consistency of judgment, and focused teaching.
- Provides greater confidence in teacher judgments, and assurance that judgments are consistent with those of other professionals.
- Leads to shared expectations of learning, and understandings of standards and progression of learning.
- Develops deeper understandings about content and progressions of learning.
- Improves quality of assessment.
- Aligns expectations and judgments with standards or progressions, and hence improved teaching and learning.
- Assures parents and others that interpretations of students' achievements are in line with those of other professionals.
The benefits of moderation - for leadership teams and Boards of Trustees
- Greater confidence in teachers’ judgments and assurance that judgments are consistent within and across schools.
- Provides useful, dependable information for target setting.
- Provides information that can shape future professional development needs for teachers.
Skills required for moderation and building a supportive learning culture:
The roles
Student
Teacher:
School:
Student
- Actively participate in learning and assessment
- Complete work to the best of their ability
- Develop understanding of desired learning outcomes
- Participate in selecting evidence for moderation
- Use skills developed through self and peer assessment
Teacher:
- Select evidence to moderate
- Participate in the moderation process
- Share their expectations and interpretations in order to clarify their understandings about what students have achieved and what the next steps in learning are
School:
- Provide a moderation coordinator/leader
- Provide regular opportunities for teachers to share their expectations and interpretations
- Develop consistent and cohesive policies and procedures for moderation
- Review their assessment cycles to incorporate regular moderation