Glossary

Monitoring and accountability mechanisms that take a procedural approach encourage stakeholders to only follow prescribed administrative procedures and bureaucratic rules. Such control mechanisms can be seen as a barrier to, or disincentive for, innovation and school-led development.

A pilot designed to explore the practicalities of implementing a policy in a particular way or by a particular route, assessing what methods of delivery work best or are most cost-effective.

Process-oriented assessment is an assessment that aims to develop pupil learning though change or improvement in their learning environment. The methods associated with this form of assessment are usually pupil-oriented, for example pupil interviews, portfolios, etc.

Professional learning refers to any activity undertaken by education professionals that aims to stimulate their thinking and professional knowledge and to improve their practice, ensuring that it is evidence-informed and up-to-date. Professional learning includes activities that take place throughout an individual’s professional career.

(See also ‘Teacher professional learning’)

A professional learning community refers to collaborations of education stakeholders ‘around clusters of schools involving …. school and community personnel, together with researchers, local area leaders and policy-makers’ (European Agency, 2015e, p. 7).

Professional learning communities may serve two broad purposes:

(1) improving the skills and knowledge of educators through collaborative study, expertise exchange, and professional dialogue, and (2) improving the educational aspirations, achievement, and attainment of students through stronger leadership and teaching. Professional learning communities often function as a form of action research—i.e., as a way to continually question, reevaluate, refine, and improve teaching strategies and knowledge (‘professional learning community’ in the Glossary of Education Reform).

(See also ‘Learning community’)

‘The process of improving or developing, or of getting nearer to achieving or completing something; the process of developing gradually from one stage or state to another’ (Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries).

To enable learner progress, schools need to:

• understand all learners’ current situations and support them by using information to plan future steps;
• develop the ‘capability to meet learner needs and increase curriculum relevance, helping learners to gain competences’ for future life, studies and employment
• be flexible to ‘adapt pedagogical strategies and provide support’ – to increase ‘access to appropriate learning opportunities’ and develop learners’ knowledge and skills.

‘Schools should be clear about what progress might look like for all learners, particularly when it does not lead to traditional recognition’, e.g. through examinations. Progress may be shown (for example, by learners with more complex support needs) by ‘increased responses, improved communication and social skills, reduced need for support, less reliance on routines, reduction in challenging behaviour, transfer of learning between different situations or increased self-advocacy’ (European Agency, 2015e, pp. 12–13).
 

The term ‘provision’ includes all forms of support that may help the process of participation in education for all learners: curriculum, assessment procedures, forms of pedagogy, organisation and management and resources that contribute to the development of supportive systems that promote inclusive education.