“It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it…that’s what gets results”

Our experience with Assessment for Learning in various forms around the world has taught us lessons of great relevance to the implementation of Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence, and the achievement of the national outcomes.

We now understand that in order for students to become the successful, confident, effective and responsible learners we wish them to be, our approaches to some of the fundamentals of learning and teaching may need to be re-engineered.

We need to look again at teachers' planning, questioning, marking and feedback, and the deep involvement of the students themselves.

We may also need to re-define what 'counts' as achievement. Is the subject-based curriculum, taught in schools, sufficient to develop and illuminate the talents, achievement and potential contribution of all our young people in the 21st century?

Approaches to schooling and teaching are 'hard-wired'; difficult to change, however much we understand the need to do so.

The limbic system of the brain, not the neo-cortex, is the key to adult habit change: how does 'limbic learning' challenge our traditional approach to teachers' professional development, and how does the necessary transformation of teaching manifest itself in the way schools do business?

This address will draw from the presenter's recent direct experience in several education systems to highlight how successful change in education works, and why.

Ruth Sutton began her teaching career in 1972.

After three years as Deputy Head of an inner city secondary school she was Director of the Manchester Assessment project for two years, and then the first Director of Manchester LA's Assessment Development Unit from 1984-87.

After two further years as an LA senior adviser, she embarked on independent consultancy in 1988, working first on assessment issues in England and Wales.

Since then her interest in assessment has developed to include the evaluation of students, teachers and schools, and the wider issues of sustainable change in education settings.

The scope of her work has also expanded over twenty years: she works frequently in the USA and most Canadian provinces, including a major contract with Winnipeg School Division culminating in the publication of 'Creating Independent Student Learners' in 2006.

She consults regularly with the Assess to Learn (ATOL) programme in New Zealand, supports student assessment development in various international schools, and has acted as 'school improvement adviser' in several English secondary schools.