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Meeting in the Middle (MiM) is a gathering of educators working in Montessori Adolescent Programs across the region, this forum is intended to be relevant, enjoyable and affordable.

This year the forum was due to take place at Melbourne Montessori School in Victoria over two days. Unfortunately due to the recent COVID-19 outbreaks we have moved this forum online and reduced it to one day. We would like to thank the team at Melbourne Montessori School for organising and delivering this event.

As always, MiM is a place for discussions to begin, continue and carry on beyond the event itself that build connections with colleagues and friends working in Montessori Adolescent Programs throughout Australasia.

The schedule for the day is as follows:

Keynote Topic:

Agency, Assessment and Accountability: The search for a secret sauce?

A principal of a middle school that had been described as innovative talked about his search for the ‘secret sauce’ that would engage his students, contribute to the wellbeing of learners and meet his local curriculum accountability requirements. The central ingredient to the sauce is the development of assessment capable learners who understand assessment for learning, and as learning. These learners have the skills to collaborate with peers and teachers to decide on the evidence they can present, and to identify the next steps in their learning.

This is my second presentation to the Montessori community with a focus on agency. Building on the previous discussion of Vygotsky’s cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), this session has three aims. The first is to look at the essential connections between agency, assessment and student engagement in their learning. The second goal is to look at the language of assessment and how this can be developed with learners (children and adults) so that they are assessment capable. This considers qualities of good rubric development that focuses on the individual progress of the learner, scaffolds higher-order thinking skills, and opens the conversations for feedback to feedforward. This deep understanding of the language of assessment connects learners directly to achievement standards of the state or national curricula. The third goal is to consider how an assessment capable community contributes to increased wellbeing, reduced teacher stress and a more effective use of open learning environments.

This session has applications from the early years through to teacher professional learning. Assessment capability has no age boundaries!

About Marcia:
Dr Marcia Behrenbruch has over 35 years of experience ranging from a year 12 teacher of mathematics and science up to designing assessment protocols for observations in early learning. She is currently a director of Reshaping Schools, a lecturer at Deakin University in Melbourne, and an active IB lead educator.

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