There are calls for NAPLAN’s ability to improve student writing outcomes to be put under urgent review following a ground-breaking pilot literacy program that is boosting the creative writing skills of Year 9 students
According to the latest available NAPLAN data, the writing skills of Year 9 students have gone backwards over the past decade, with some students heading into high school with the reading competency of an early primary student.
The new pilot program, launched by Steiner Education Australia (SEA), follows a funded a research project conducted by the University of the Sunshine Coast involving 54 Year 9 students using craft-based exercises which allowed young writers to “perform” the act of writing.
The innovative creative writing rubric used to assess the students was based on the ‘gold standard’ minimalist tradition and simple writing style favoured by the likes of George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver.
Steiner Education Australia CEO, Dr Virginia Moller, said the study showed that NAPLAN’s writing assessment rubric is “not fit for purpose” and “inadequate” in preparing students to be versatile, creative and engaged writers.
“NAPLAN’s teaching, purpose, and testing around writing and literacy is not fit for purpose and missing the drivers that would achieve the results we crave,” Dr Moller said.
“The research demonstrates that a rich ‘craft-based’ teaching practise allows students to connect with and be transported by their own ideas and narratives – an approach that underpins deep learning.”
Dr Moller said this this knowledge combined with the neurological evidence shows that student engagement and learning is “sub-optimal” in stressful environments, and that the case against current NAPLAN-fuelled educational structures is gathering steam.
“With declining writing levels in Australian students, we must urgently review the ability of NAPLAN testing to improve student outcomes and turn our attention to ways that engage students in authentic learning,” she said.
The project found that NAPLAN’s influence on how writing is taught in schools has destroyed Year 9 students’ ability to use their imagination.
The study, published in The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, shows that NAPLAN has restricted the way writing is taught in high schools since it was introduced in 2008. It concludes that not only does NAPLAN penalise creativity – it is not even designed to assess a student’s creative capacity.
The authors of the study, widely cited literacy and language academic researcher Dr Michael D Carey, international author and senior education lecturer Dr Shelley Davidow and author and leading international expert in creative writing theory Dr Paul Williams, said writing skills of the Steiner students involved in the project “improved in all aspects according to the creative writing rubric”.
However, at the end of the creative writing project the students’ writing showed no significant improvement according to the NAPLAN criteria.
“Students showed improvement in the areas covered in the creative writing project that aligned with the creative writing rubric; it is evident that the NAPLAN rubric does not assess imaginative capacity,” the study concluded.
The study’s analysis of concurrent validity showed that both rubrics identified levels of proficiency in students' writing in a similar way, but the creative writing rubric measured students against more valid aspects of creative writing. This means the creative writing rubric would be a good alternative for teachers to base their in-class assessment on.
“We conclude that the creative writing rubric is a fit-for-purpose guide to school-based learning and assessment of creative writing, particularly when teachers join students to adopt dispositions of creative writers who are engaged with developing their writing craft and individual voice,” the report’s authors said.
“A NAPLAN-influenced structural approach to teaching writing has subsumed the development of imaginative capacity. Since NAPLAN commenced in 2008, there has been little-to-no improvement across Australia in young peoples’ writing skills. In the last decade, NAPLAN writing achievement has been static in years 3 and 5 and has declined in years 7 and 9.”
The authors say some teachers, possibly due to a lack of knowledge of how to teach creative writing, have resorted to explicitly teaching-to-the-test with assistance from publishers and tutoring services that prepare students for NAPLAN.
“As a result, the current approach to narrative writing in Australian schools is narrow and reductive and does not assist students to use their imaginations to become innovative creative writers,” they said.
“Student narratives that demonstrate creativity and originality are penalised in the NAPLAN marking criteria.”