Levels and Outcomes Simplified

Levels and Outcomes Simplified ...

A recent newspaper advertisement for a "traineeship" in the mining industry included the following ...

"Requirements:

- Applicants must have completed year 10 with minimum passes in C Grade equivalent to eight Stage 4 units or higher. "

The phrase "completed year 10" makes some sense, but the rest relates to the now outdated 'Unit Curriculum' reporting structure. Considering this is from a large Western Australian employer it suggests the message about Levels and Outcomes is not getting through. Hopefully this document will help clarify some of the confusion.

The curriculum is divided into eight "Learning Areas".

Students progress through the Learning Areas from Kindergarten to Year 12 ("K to12").

Levels

Student progress is reported as being at one of eight "Levels" in each Learning Area.

LEVELS	K to 12	The Arts	English	Health & Phys Ed	LOTE	Maths	Science	SOSE	T&E
1	Kindergarten
2
3
4
5
6
7
8	Year 12

A set of "Outcome Statements" has been developed that describe how a child demonstrates they are achieving at a particular Level. Teachers use the Outcome Statements to assess student progress.

For example, a student would demonstrate attainment of Level 3 in T&E if he/she:

TP 3.1: Examines and identifies key design features, including aesthetic features, and environmental effects of products, systems, processes, services and environments.

TP 3.2: Generates designs that take into account some social and environmental implications and communicates using a range of graphical representations, models and technical terms.

TP 3.3: Plans and carries out the steps of production processes, making safe and efficient use of resources.

TP 3.4: Assesses how well the ideas, products, systems, processes, services and environments used meet design requirements, including consideration of functional and aesthetic criteria.

As a general guide, a student could be expected to take up to two years to move from one Level to the next. Some students may enter school with abilities above Level 1. Some students may never reach Level 8.

Strands

Each of the Learning Areas is further divided into a number of "Strands". Technology and Enterprise, for example, is divided into four Strands:

Learning Area	Strands
Technology and Enterprise	Technology Process Materials Information Systems

Some Learning Areas have more than four Stands.

Reporting

A school report attempts to provide a "Profile" of student abilities. As you can see, things could get quite complicated.

	Strand	Strand	Strand	Strand	Strand	Strand	Strand
The Arts	Communicating	Using	Evaluating	Understanding
English
Health& Phys Ed	Knowledge	Attitudes	Physical	Self Management	Interpersonal
LOTE	Speaking	Reading	Writing
Maths	Appreciating	Working	Number	Measurement	Chance	Space	Algebra
Science	Investigating	Earth	Energy	Life	Materials
SOSE	Investigating	Place&Space	Resources	Culture	Time	Systems	Citizenship
T&E	Technology Process	Materials	Information	Systems

Contexts

One further complication relates to Learning Area contexts. A student may, for example, be working in several "subjects" within the T&E Learning Area such as Woodwork, Computing, Clothing and Food. Each of these different subjects is called a Learning Area "context". For various reasons, a student may achieve at different Levels in each context. The school report can get quite complicated, but keep in mind that it aims to present a "profile" of student progress across the whole range of school activities. People are complex!

Moving though Levels

Students enter school somewhere near Level 1 and leave somewhere closer to Level 8. It seems reasonable to assume that individual students will move through the Levels at different rates.

How do schools cater for students working at different Levels?

The answer lies in two concepts: Outcomes versus Objectives and Open-ended Assessment Tasks .

Until the introduction of the Curriculum Framework, most subjects were defined in terms of learning "Objectives". Teachers worked from a list of objectives to be covered in the subject and reported to parents in terms of how successful the student was in mastering the objectives. Results were usually reported as a percentage, or as a grade of "A", "B", "C", etc. One analogy is to think of the student as a container for facts into which the Objectives were poured. The most successful student was the one who stored the most Objectives and could recall them at assessment time.

Outcomes are more general than objectives and often describe behaviours, understandings and abilities, rather than specific pieces of information. An Outcome usually requires the student to apply knowledge, rather than recall facts. Using the student-as-a-container analogy from the previous paragraph, with Outcomes-based assessment the student is required to demonstrate an ability to make use the contents of the container and apply their understanding, rather than simply recall its contents.

Q. If each student in a class is operating at their own Level in each of the Strands in each of the Learning Areas, does each student require an individual Learning Program? Do students need to be "streamed" into groups with others at their Level?

A. No. Thanks to Open-ended Assessment Tasks. Open-ended Assessment Tasks ("OEAT") make the whole process manageable.

An OEAT caters for a wide range of Levels. The OEAT is designed to allow students to fully display their abilities. There is no "right", or "wrong" answer. The OEAT is a tool that students can use to demonstrate their understanding and teachers can use to extract information about student understanding.

While a "closed" assessment task would typically describe what a students must "do" in order to successfully complete the task, an OEAT provides a framework in which students work to demonstrate their understanding and abilities. In theory, the same OEAT could be given to Year 1 and Year 12 classes.

A typical "closed" Science task might ask each student to make a model of a plant cell. An OEAT on the same topic would generalise the question to perhaps require students to work with others in a group to prepare a presentation for the rest of the class about the way in which plants and animals are important to each other. Students may be guided towards incorporating material about cellular structure, but in most respects, they are free to chose how to demonstrate their understanding.

In "assessing" the student, the teacher uses the Outcome statements to establish a "Level". The Outcome Statements describe the criteria required for the student to be assigned a particular "Level". The OEAT is the tool that generates the evidence about understanding and allows the teacher to assign Levels.

Can a Student Regress Levels?

Yes. The teacher is called upon to assess the Level at which the student is working based on "evidence". If the quality of the evidence is poorer than required for a 'higher' Level, then a 'lower' Level would be awarded. If this occurs, a number of questions need to be addressed ...

1. If the student has "gone backwards", were earlier Level assessments accurate?
2. If earlier assessments were accurate why isn't the student producing the expected standard of work?
3. Is the OEAT appropriate ... should the student be re-evaluated on another task?

What are the 'Normal' Levels

Parents (and students themselves) want to know how their child is progressing in terms of their own potential and compared to others.

The Outcome Statements that describe the Level of a student are written in developmental terms. Given an appropriate learning environment, students will progress from lower levels to higher levels. What is not so easy to quantify is the rate of progress. As a 'rule of thumb', a student could remain at a particular Level for around two years. Some students will move through the Levels faster than others.

The following table offers a general guide, but it cannot be taken as a hard and fast indicator. Some students will be at Level 5, or 6 at the end of Primary school. Some Year 10 students will still be at Level 3 when they leave Lower School. Some Year 12 students will never reach Level 7 and 8.

A Guide to Levels Across K to 12
Year	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5	Level 6	Level 7	Level 8
K
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

8
9
10

11
12

Comparing Levels Across Learning Areas

Q1. Will a student at a particular Level in one Learning Area be at the same Level in other Learning Areas?

A. Possibly not.

People have different levels of ability in different fields of endeavour. People are usually stronger in some areas an weaker in others. In the early years of schooling, Levels across Learning Areas may be closely linked, but it would be normal for differences to appear in later years.

Q2. Does Level 3 in Maths mean the same thing as Level 3 in T&E?

A. Maybe not.

The aim in developing the Outcome Statements was to provide consistency across the curriculum by carefully wording the Outcomes, but It would be unreasonable to expect perfect correlation across widely differing Learning Areas.

There are often differences between different "contexts' of the same Learning Area. To expect 100% correlation across all Learning Areas is asking too much.