'Hidden, normative and covert'

‘Hidden, normative and covert’: invisible NAPLAN practices dictate schools, research finds

By Sarah Duggan

NAPLAN has become so “insidiously embedded” into Australian schooling that many educators no longer question – or even realise – the profound impact the test is wielding on their daily practice, new research has found.

Drawing on interviews with 27 Queensland teachers and school leaders, plus observations from staff meetings and classrooms, researchers have investigated the invisible effects of standardised testing policy and argue NAPLAN’s uses, be they intended or otherwise, have become entirely normalised and routine in schools.

Researcher Dr Stephanie Wescott from Monash University told EducationHQ that although we know NAPLAN’s influence has extended into areas such as narrowing the curriculum, influencing staffing decisions, and compelling teachers to ‘teach to the test’, many educators no longer connected the dots.

“We really wanted to look at the way that these things have become so normative now that we don’t even connect them with NAPLAN; we don’t even identify NAPLAN as the origin for some of the ways that we do things.

“We’ve called them hidden, normative and covert, because unless you really trace back or interrogate ‘why did we do things this way?’ you probably wouldn’t realise…” Wescott said.

A culture of NAPLAN accountability was very much alive and well amongst teachers, the researcher reported. 

“The relative growth of your students in their NAPLAN results can be attributed solely to your teaching, in that particular year that you have them, which actually ignores the input of teachers that have come before you and the collaborative nature of that work.”

NAPLAN had also come to shape curriculum delivery in many schools, curtailing the scope of students’ learning, Wescott added.

“There are some schools where students will only do the types of writing that will appear on the NAPLAN test.

“They are not therefore exposed to all the other possibilities for writing in English.

“It also can inform educators’ own understanding of the possibilities for their practice. We saw from the research participants … the way they see and understand education has been shaped by these data-driven rationalities, measurement rationalities.

“So, (NAPLAN) is really informing the way that we imagine possibilities for teaching and curriculum – and that is so narrow, and it’s so limiting. And we can do a lot better…”

Despite having held up a research lens to contemporary rationales in education for a few years now, the ex-teacher said she was surprised to find that many teachers reported they didn’t think about NAPLAN all that much, nor thought it was something they ought to pay attention to.

“And yet, with a little bit of probing, it was actually revealed that most of what they were doing in their school was underpinned by NAPLAN … but because it was just such a normal part of the system, they didn’t really see it as NAPLAN preparation or NAPLAN guiding what they were doing.”

A newly-released review into public education in WA found NAPLAN had not resulted in any sustained improvements in educational outcomes or helped to close educational inequality.

“The benefits for teachers from NAPLAN have not materialised and many have experienced increased workload and a loss of professional standing as a result,” the summary reads.

“Individual national testing has narrowed the curriculum for children while teachers spend more classroom time ‘teaching to the test’.”

The independent panel urged all education ministers to consider replacing NAPLAN with a sample assessment like PISA, which is conducted less frequently and doesn’t publicly identify schools in the results.

Wescott said NAPLAN had indeed morphed into a marketing tool for schools.

“We can’t blame schools for wanting to optimise their NAPLAN results, because that’s the system that they work in.

“It’s a system of comparison and measurement and using data to demonstrate the effectiveness of your teaching.”

But the researcher questioned whether our complacency with the testing regime was right.

“We do have to take a broad view, I think, and question whether we’re OK with these things.

“... with the standardised test dictating or informing students’ education, what they are able to explore, what kind of things they do in English … we have to ask ourselves if we’re really OK with that.”

Wescott wants to see NAPLAN abolished, or at least “pared back to its original intention”, where it works only as a tool for identifying those students not meeting minimum standards in literacy and numeracy, plus as a means of targetting funding.

“I would like to not see NAPLAN used as a public tool to measure school performance and effectiveness.

“There’s so much more that happens in schools than just testing and measuring, and it is a real indictment on what we [envisage for] education,” she argued.

(Source: EducationHQ)