A really interesting part of being a teacher is that a teacher will often teach students how to do something that they themselves haven’t done in some time, or ever. Recently, we submitted to the Access to Research and Inclusive Excellence National Conference 2024 (ARIE 2024) held at George Mason University to present a poster on our research and work to implement a standards based grading, assessment, curriculum, and feedback model, employing the Assessment for Learning Project’s Core Shifts at the core of all shifts. We were accepted. The selection process was tight, and this left us facing a clear reality - neither of us had ever actually built a research poster before.
So, we started with what we know. We know how to research. Both of us teach research to our students at a variety of levels based on the context. In AP Research course, there’s the building of a rudimentary research poster to present some of the students’ significant literature. Through the course, the students continue to build and iterate upon their poster as they move through their research and inquiry project. In any level of English class that we’ve taught, there’s some element of research work. Right now, in our AP English Language and Composition courses, we’re working through the research and synthesis unit. In this unit, we’re teaching students how to develop keyword searches, develop annotated bibliographies, and construct a discussion between sources to support an argument. So, by leaning into our skills and abilities as teachers we were able to recognize the skills we knew how to do, even if we hadn’t done them or done them in some time. We dove into the process of creating and revising this poster: confident in the knowledge that we know how to do a lot of the work necessary to present our work.
The first step was to consider the scholarly conversation and the gap that we aim to fill through our work. This took us to the bookshelves in our classrooms and offices. We reacquainted ourselves with Jimmy Casas, Robert Marzano, and other publications related to standards-based grading, assessment, and data. We formulated the gap for our research in our most important element - our context, thus our students. From there, we went to the work we had already done. We looked at previous presentations (AP Annual Conference 2023, previous professional learning sessions on standards-based grading, etc.), the sources we cited within them, and the sources cited within the work that we’re doing within our school district and the Communities of Practice work related to shifting assessment practices and models. Adding to our own reading, study, and professional learning, we were able to build a list of citations to guide our poster and the discussion we want to frame our work for a larger audience. This is a research conference with a lot of post-secondary academics, so understanding the larger scholarly conversation that they may know will help us to communicate to our audience. In addition, we know how to help our audience to better understand the Core Shifts at work and their connection to other learning including standards based grading models, social emotional learning, and cultures of belonging in school environments. With that framework locked in, we dove into previous data from students, and we created a first draft.
Our first poster draft relied too heavily on words. Learning is messy, and asking for help is a sign of strength, so we decided to reach out and improve on our mess. We were able to identify areas of the poster that could be moved from words into graphics and redesigned areas of our data discussion to reflect that reality. We also considered the way that people “eat with their eyes” at this type of conference session, so we found space to include more visual representations of our work. The limitations of the static poster format is a challenge - we can’t employ any videos of students or parents, for example. However, including a lot of student representation via the data presented, their work samples, their voices, and their insights help us to pair our argument with our organization and content.
In the end, after several drafts, we created a product which demonstrates our development of theory and practice to disrupt traditional grading, assessment, feedback, and curriculum models to shift to more centering of student voice. Looking ahead, it’ll be interesting to consider the way in which we’ll use the poster as a third presenter at the reception. This is going to present a lot of challenges as we prepare to present and network at the conference. The chance to push ourselves to present our work in a new way to a different audience presented a fantastic challenge, but also a great opportunity to do the same things we encourage our students to do.
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