Assessment

Four Mindset Shifts for Standards-Based Learning in Secondary Schools

By Colt Turner
06-May-26

Implementing standards-based assessment, grading, and reporting practices effectively often requires educators to identify and adjust past perspectives... ..more

Looking Beyond Accreditation To Include Assessment Reform

By Vickie Swann and James Mattiace
11-Feb-26

Accreditation has the power to be used specifically to drive change in assessment practices... ..more

Empowering Students in the Age of AI

By Rachael Thrash
25-Sep-24

We can turn AI from a potential barrier into a powerful tool for authentic learning. A case for student agency in assessment… ..more

Are Our Students Ready To Receive Teacher Feedback?

By Anna Hasic-Wallis
31-Jan-24

We assume that students are as engaged with their learning as we are, that they understand feedback is integral for improvement and growth… ..more

Fashioning Identities: How Fashion Shows Can Stimulate Learning in Your Classroom

By Timothy Fuller Bazin, Jungmeen Lee, Calvin Kamphuis, Kasia Martin, and Vasile Lozneanu
31-Jan-24

Seoul Foreign School shares the student learning as well as practices that made it possible to create a project-based learning fashion show… ..more

The Benefits of Blind Marking

By Tristan Reynolds
11-Oct-23

Adopting double blind marking into your school’s practice can improve the learning environment for students, teachers, parents, and school leaders… ..more

Purposeful Grade Reporting in the Student-Centered Classroom

By Dr. Yujiro Fujiwara
01-Feb-23

A framework that describes a purposeful instruction/learning/assessment cycle… ..more

Reflecting on Assessment, and Leading Learning

By John Bray
27-Sep-23

Change in how we assess is happening but slowly. There are ways schools can adapt, even within structures with culminating examinations... ..more

Within and Without: Facilitating Students’ Authentic Exploration

By Shannon Kerry
10-May-23

Course content can act as a bridge between a student’s inner emotional world and their developing conceptual understanding of the real world… ..more

Artificial Intelligence and Education: The Need To Reform Assignments

By Conrad Hughes
24-May-23

Using technology and not trying to ban it is not only a preference but also a necessity… ..more

The Right Direction

By Neil Morgan Griffiths
29-Sep-21

The evaluation of individual student physical literacy levels feels like an imprecise practice…. Perhaps we could pause right there and consider a solution. ..more

Dubai Students Join Functional Movement Revolution

By Jill Alali
06-Jul-21

Fairgreen International School is the first school in Dubai to introduce a revolutionary, data-driven system of movement screening and remediation to promote optimal physical wellbeing for its students. ..more

Affectively and Socially Healthy Environments Promote Learning

By Dr Karen L. Taylor
22-Jun-21

Thanks to developments in neuroscience we now know much more now than we did in the past about the interplay of emotion and cognition, feeling and thinking. What could this interconnectedness mean for us in terms of our classroom practice? ..more

Learning Occurs in a Space Where Objectives Are Just Beyond But Not Too Far From the Learner

By Dr Karen L. Taylor
08-Jun-21

As important a pedagogical tool as scaffolding may be, we should not oversimplify its relationship to the zone of proximal development. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive, but they are also not synonymous. ..more

How to Maximize Student Feedback in Hybrid and Virtual Learning Contexts

By Dr. Rachel Ball
13-Apr-21

Formative assessment presents a powerful opportunity for improving student outcomes. Here are several practical suggestions for providing formative feedback to students in hybrid and virtual learning settings. ..more

Training vs. Teaching: Reflecting on Practice

By Adelina Holmes
03-Mar-21

Initially when leading trainings, Adelina Holmes was giving fast lectures and expecting participants to absorb the information she was "gifting" to them—a common mistake. Everything shifted when she started designing her workshops in the same way she planned a class. ..more

They Built It; Will You Use It? A Significant Enhancement to Virtual Recruiting!

By Chip Barder
22-Jun-21

TIE is uplifting the profession by presenting a more substantial view of what an outstanding educator looks like. Those seeking positions can now showcase their candidacy through a standards-based lens, supported by evidence of their own choosing. ..more

Wait... Did Points Just Become Pointless?

By Elizabeth Stark
02-Feb-21

Last spring, Elizabeth Stark was dumbfounded to learn that the IBDP exams had been canceled and those all-important "points" were suddenly rendered meaningless. But it wasn't long before this eclipse allowed her to see things in a new light. ..more

International Standards for Teachers: Making a Difference to Learning

By Bambi Betts
29-Mar-21

Standards for teachers is not a new idea. Standards for teachers reflecting the unique international needs? Gathering steam. What is new? Truly using them as drivers for learning in view of keeping an outstanding teacher in every classroom every day. ..more

How Do We Know If Students Are Learning?

By Kristen MacConnell
19-Jan-21

What classroom assessment practices will contribute most to understanding and improving student learning? And what is the role of the teacher leader in supporting student learning through effective assessment practices? Here are some effective strategies and tools. ..more

Involving Students in Constructing the Criteria for Good Writing

By Kim Marshall
13-Apr-21

Including students in shaping what will be assessed by co-constructing success criteria has proven an effective way to improve student writing, according to Jennifer Gonzalez. “It’s essentially backward planning with students for success.” ..more

New Research Finds Higher Levels of Critical Thinking in IB DP Students

By Dr. Tiffani Betts Razavi
08-Dec-20

Critical thinking skills are cited as one of the key strengths of the International Baccalaureate, vital to the core mission of IB programs. Recent research has found that students of the program have significantly greater critical thinking skills than their non-IB peers. ..more

ACS Hillingdon Launches Global Citizens Diploma to Recognize Every Student's Achievements Beyond Grades

By ACS Press Office
08-Dec-20

ACS International School Hillingdon has become the first school in Europe to offer the Global Citizens Diploma (GCD), a qualification that acknowledges all of the exceptional citizenship and service-related activities students undertake to become global citizens. ..more

Pandemic-Prompted Progress?

By Dr. Tiffani Betts Razavi
11-Nov-20

After some seven months of covid-19, educators and researchers are asking: what progress has been prompted by the pandemic? Are any of the lockdown-induced adjustments here to stay? Are there any old ways that won’t survive the virus? ..more

Standards-Based Report Cards: If Not Now, When?

By Colin Brown and Lindsay Prendergast
14-Oct-20

Standards-based grading practices proved to be a critical element of consistency and stability in guiding our focus around student learning and in providing accurate, meaningful, and proactive feedback to our learners and their parents during these turbulent, complex times. ..more

Understanding by Design

By Carlos Minuesa
17-Feb-20

The 21st-century school aspires to teach through comprehension, but how do teachers know when students have understood a topic? ASV is using various indicators to renovate their academic programs and to respond to challenges in contemporary education. ..more

The Importance of Defining Learning

By Matt Piercy
05-Feb-20

What does “learning” really mean? It seems essential that we define it—if not as a society, or as an international school community, then at least at the institutional level. How do we expect students to think critically if we are not providing them the necessary time and space in which to do it? ..more

It’s Time to Graduate Beyond STE(A)M and Coding

By Matt Harris
19-Oct-18

Are STEM, STEAM, and coding programs having the desired effect of building intrinsic technical skills among students that will be used in university and beyond? My travels and experiences have shown the answer to be… maybe. But we can do better. ..more

Reading & Writing Workshop for the Middle Years: Lessons of an IB Examiner

By Chris McCarthy
14-Oct-18

After implementing the Teachers College Reading Writing Project program, I noted measurable progress in the quality of my students' writing and their ability to read both fiction and non-fiction with incisiveness. But is a workshop model compatible with the inevitable high-stakes exams students must take in high school? ..more

Flexible Seating Favors Focus

By Diana Martinez
02-Nov-18

This year in my classroom I struggled with a couple of students who were experiencing difficulty staying on-task. I decided to create a more comfortable classroom environment and give them options as to where to work, with whom, and in what order to complete their tasks. ..more

Evolving Teacher Leadership

By Jason Hicks
13-Apr-18

We failed Cody. As I reflect on my development as a teacher leader, I now believe that we failed this student not because our team lacked efficacy or consciousness, but because we did not understand, and I did not apply, practices related to effective teacher leadership. Effective leaders understand how to develop collaborative groups. ..more

Assessment, Success, and Success Skills

By Mike Simpson
07-Jun-18

Resilience, along with perseverance, diligence, self-discipline, positivity, and a love for learning, is a success skill that we are working hard at our school to develop in all of our children. I believe that the development of all of these success skills are dependent upon a child’s sense of capacity—the belief that they are capable of achievement. ..more

Benefits of English Language Testing at the Early Childhood Level

By Bonnie Billak
19-Jan-18

It is common practice for schools to test student proficiency levels in a variety of subject areas at all grade levels. Should assessing the English proficiency level of Early Childhood students be added to this battery of testing? ..more

Grades: A Hurdle Worth Knocking Over in Physical Education

By Neil Morgan Griffiths
13-Jan-18

I’m not sure what amazes me more, the relentless conviction demonstrated by educators in their desire to still use grades or the abject failure of educators, demonstrated through their inability to stop using them? Through physical education we probably find one of our greatest opportunities to embrace a paradigm shift. ..more

Educators focus on Growth Beyond Grades at Teacher Skills Forum 2018

By Chloe McMath
08-Mar-18

Over 1,300 delegates convened in Jordan on 3 and 4 March 2018, for the fourth annual Teacher Skills Forum to hear renowned international education experts discuss key trends in education under the theme of Growth beyond Grades. ..more