The hysteria that ensues annually has become a little predictable and very political. This year we learnt that Hemingway would have failed NAPLAN. In years gone by, it was Shakespeare. Clearly these authors were missing the part where their data was being measured by a national benchmarking tool. Perhaps they wrote for a different purpose.
The political football that is NAPLAN data, has shifted the focus away from what we actually need large scale standardised assessment for. That is, to provide a national scale which maps skills and understandings, and provides information about student literacy achievement.
How else would we measure our system, the success of our policies, practices, resources and understand curriculum alignment when seven states cannot agree on one curriculum?
Purpose is actually the key to this argument. As educators, do we believe that the purpose of writing is to perform under test conditions or, do we believe that the purpose is to equip children with a tool for thinking and learning?
Is a student’s capacity to write creatively with style and voice, actually what we want measured? Or do we want to measure a student’s ability to manipulate language, create an accurate sentence, use grammar, syntax and spelling according to the reason for which they write?
So that when they write for their own purposes, they are equipped for any form of writing that they choose, including becoming the next Hemingway.
The purpose that drives schools to ‘teach to the test’, to push genres and use multiple old NAPLAN stimuli, is the pressure that schools endure around accountability.
Accountability is a good thing. However, when schools have worked backwards and shaped their teaching to suit the assessment – this is not a good use of the data.
Using evidence of student learning to adapt our teaching is the practice we should seek.
However, what the media is saying is true. Our national writing data is in decline. Our boys are two years below our girls by Year 9. Our system is not producing writers with competence, let alone a modern Hemingway or Shakespeare.
What the media has not commented on though, is that writing is the hardest thing we ask of our students. The research base on writing instruction is lagging well behind Reading and Numeracy.
As a system we are not providing knowledge for our teachers in what is best practice for struggling young writers. Our curriculum gives us the ‘what’ but not the ‘how’, resulting in schools muddling through this in whatever way they think best.
The history of teaching writing in our country is once again born from good intentions. The desire to have students love and engage with writing – surely these conditions give rise to a modern Shakespeare? Our practices, however, are not moving the needle. To do that, schools will need to do something different beyond whatever process they are using.
Developing as an expert takes 10,000 hours of practice. This would be the equivalent of eight school years just spent on writing. So, creating quality writers means that we only have time to control the small steps. Best practice teaching in the time we have available means that as educators we need to give students the tools for accuracy before we release them to find their inner Shakespeare, and be storytellers who will stand the test of time.
Perhaps if this was what educators knew to be the measurement, we would not be trying to create literary genius before students have mastery over the sequence of small steps required to get there.
So in short, I want to argue that NAPLAN does not kill creativity. We can only control what is absolute, not compare ourselves to subjective opinions that measure our students against authors who have, by all accounts, endured the 10,000 hours of expert practice.
The pressure on schools to have students perform without the skills and life experience to do it, is diverting attention from a much bigger problem. Our teaching is failing our students. Creative writing is a distraction. Human nature says we need to blame someone – schools have become the target, but one thing is clear: teachers WANT to build expertise in teaching writing and as leaders we need to make a space for them to do this.
Progressive networks such as Think Forward Educators that support explicit teaching of writing are on the rise. More powerful writing assessment techniques that move beyond subjectivity, such as No More Marking’s AI Comparative Judgement are being sought.
Practical, successful techniques such as The Writing Revolution, are the choice for more and more Australian schools. This is an exciting time for teachers of writing in Australia – we have the chance to help our students thrive – if as a collective we can build what is shown to work using evidence outside our context.
If COVID has taught us anything, it’s to leave the silos and find what is working and pivot.
What would happen if we teach and assess for growth, not achievement? If we controlled what we can before we release students as writers?
I don’t think our next Hemingway will be all that concerned about their NAPLAN result but I hope they would be thanking a teacher.
References
Carey, A. (2022, August 4). 'Hemingway would fail': NAPLAN takes toll on Creative Writing. The Sydney Morning Herald.
Comparative Judgement. (n.d.). Retrieved from No More Marking: https://www.nomoremarking.com/
Fachinetti, A. (2015, October). A short, personal and political history of NAPLAN. Education Today. Retrieved from file:///C:/Users/08202594/Downloads/article-pdf-1126.pdf
Hochman, J. C., & Wexler, N. (2017). The Writing Revolution. San Francisco, USA: Jossey-Bass.
Writing Network. (n.d.). Retrieved from Think Forward Educators: https://thinkforwardeducators.org/writing-network
Wyatt-Smith, C., & Jackson, C. (2020). Australian Writing Survey - Building and evidence base. Research Brief Part 1, Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education. Retrieved June 2022, from https://edhq.co/3QW4d6g
Zaglas, W. (2020, October 13). Do Australian secondary school students have a ‘problem’ with writing? Education Review. Retrieved from https://edhq.co/3PXo17N
