1st Edition
The Writing Teacher’s Guide to Pedagogical Documentation Rethinking How We Assess Learners and Learning
This book is a call to action for English and English Language Arts teachers who understand that data are not numbers alone, learning is impossible to quantify, and students are our very best teachers.
Writing teacher Angela Stockman shows us how pedagogical documentation—the practice of making learning visible, capturing what is seen and heard, and then interpreting those findings in the company of our students and our colleagues—is a humbling and humane practice that grounds what we think we’ve come to know in the lived experiences of those we intend to serve. In this rich resource, she offers:
- processes and protocols for documenting learning and analyzing data;
- resources and planning tools to help you design and execute your own projects; and
- a digital documentation notebook that you can download for guidance, inspiration, and examples
With the powerful tools in this book, you’ll be inspired to reach students whose needs have been ignored by big data and whose identities have been erased by oppressive forms of assessment and evaluation.
Introduction Part 1: An Introduction to Documentation 1. What is Documentation? 2. What Brings You Here? 3. How Will You Use This Book? Part 2: Planning Your Own Documentation Project 4. Will You Document a Moment, a Journey, or a Lengthy Expedition? 5. How Will You Make Thinking and Learning Visible? 6. How Will You Document Thinking and Learning? 7. How Will You Interpret Your Data? 8. How Will You Seek Diverse Perspectives Along the Way? Part 3: Tools and Resources 9. Digital Documentation Notebook 10. Planning a Documentation Project 11. Vision 12. Documentation Kaleidoscopes 13. Recommended Resources
Biography
Angela Stockman spent 12 years teaching at the elementary, middle, and high school levels before becoming a professional learning facilitator. Currently, she continues to support thousands of literacy teachers in K-12 schools throughout the United States and Canada. In her role as the Executive Director of Distance Education at Daemen University, she also enjoys working beside higher education faculty and staff to create and facilitate quality learning experiences for undergratduate students. She continues to teach and document her learning there.
"We go down too many rabbit holes when discussing assessment, tests, data, and evidence. Angela Stockman provides a powerful perspective focusing on interpreting the myriad of information that teachers, leaders and students encounter in every lesson. The book introduces the concept of documentation, which involves investigating the people, places, processes, practices, and products of teaching and learning. Through this approach, educators are encouraged to triangulate, deduce, induce, and find meaning, ultimately taking purposeful actions in their teaching journey. This book serves as a valuable gift, empowering teachers with a fresh perspective and the ability to make a significant impact on their students' learning experiences."
Professor John Hattie, University of Melbourne, Australia. A global authority on education effectiveness, his extensive research is the world’s largest evidence base on what works best in schools to improve learning.
"As we inch towards the overdue transformation of education into a learning ecosystem that places learning, and learners, at the heart of our work, key necessities rise to the surface. One of these is the need to shift away from assessment as accounting, with its focus on low-level, high-stakes, quantitative grading, and towards assessing what actually counts. This means learning how to look for, and document, a range of valid evidence of student learning, owned and curated by learners themselves. This profound move towards assessing what we truly value places documentation at the heart of our work as learning professionals. In this wonderful book, Angela confirms the central place of the documentation of learning, both our students' and our own. She does so with the clarity and confidence of a seasoned and reflective practitioner and in a voice that feels like your favourite colleague in the next classroom. I loved this important and engaging book, and will keep it close, as a key ally in the struggle towards authentic, evidence-based learning."
Kevin Bartlett, initiator and early leader of the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program, Founding Director of the Common Ground Collaborative, and former Director of the International School of Brussels (ISB).
