SANDRA MILLIGAN

Enterprise Professor Sandra Milligan is Director of the Assessment Research Centre at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. Sandra has an unusually wide engagement with the education industry and in educational research. Originally a teacher of science and mathematics, she is also a former Director of Curriculum in an Australian state education department and has held senior research, management and governance positions in a range of educational organisations, including government agencies, not-for-profits, small start-up businesses and large, listed, international corporations. Sandra’s current research interests focus on assessment, recognition and warranting of hard-to-assess learning. She directs several research partnerships with school networks and organisations working to develop Learner Profiles for their students,. She is lead author of ‘Future Proofing Australian Students with New Credentials’ report, outlining methods to reliably assess and recognise the level of attainment of general capabilities, and of Recognition of Learning Success for All: Ensuring Trust and Utility in a New approach to Recognition of Learning in Senior Secondary Education in Australia.

"New learning metrics for new ambitions"

A number of 'First Mover' schools in Australia are working with the University of Melbourne, focused on building students' capacities in the general capabilities (or 21st century skills). They want their students to develop the range of capabilities they need to thrive as learners and citizens, no matter what life throws at them, now and in the future. This, they believe, will also deepen attainments in more traditional content domains of the curriculum. Limitations they experience include the narrowness of the common metrics of learning applied within Australia, with their dependence on common, standardised assessments and examinations, single-number representations of learning, academic rankings and narrowness of focus.

In this presentation, Sandra Milligan will outline some of the thinking and innovative approaches to assessment and credentialling that underpins the work of First Movers schools, as they reshape the 'metrics of schooling' to better support the learning ambitions they have for their students.

Key words: developmental assessment; learner profiles; standards; general capabilities.