The Assessment Companion for Thinking Skills (ACTS) Project is a transnational strategic partnership between 7 institutions in the UK, Latvia and Finland. This innovative project will strengthen the education and training paths of pre-service and in-service teachers by equipping them with high quality support and guidance to develop their confidence, competency and skills in identifying and assessing thinking skills and, in so doing, achieve high quality educational and lifelong learning outcomes for their pupils. Thinking skills are a key competency for lifelong learning and many national curricula consider thinking to be one of the key features but there is a critical gap in terms of support for teachers' pedagogical skills with regard to the teaching of thinking. Collaboration between long-established and successful expert thinking skills practitioners in the UK, Latvia and Finland carried out a needs analysis and identified three project objectives: 1. Develop a diagnostic and formative assessment tools in the form of an e-suite of audio, video and text resources to support the teaching of thinking and improve pupils’ ability and capacity to think at a high level; 2. Validate the tools across a wide range of school contexts and settings in partner countries to ensure it is transferrable, robust and accurate for use by both in-service and pre-service teachers; 3. Disseminate and encourage uptake of the tools by in-service and pre-service teachers across Europe and in so doing improve learning outcomes for their learners and a sustainable resource for the future. The project deliverables that arise out of these objectives are: - an e-suite of assessment tools that will support teachers in the diagnostic and formative assessment of thinking skills; - promotional material that supports dissemination of the tools to an established and developing local, regional and national audience; - a dedicated teacher training package that will support rapid uptake and implementation of the tools. Project outcomes will be openly-accessible though partners websites. The impact of these innovative assessment tools will be improved levels of pupil thinking skills through effective, fully embedded in-service and pre-service teachers' pedagogic practice. The longer term impact will be widespread local, regional, national and international engagement with a well-resourced, experienced, proficient and sustainable community of practice relating to thinking skills development.
The Assessment Companion for Thinking Skills (ACTS) Project was a transnational strategic partnership between 7 institutions in the UK, Latvia and Finland - two Higher Education Institutions (UK and Finland), one UK educational charity, one Latvian educational organisation and three schools (UK, Latvia and Finland). The project helped to strengthen the education and training paths of pre-service and in-service teachers by equipping them with high quality support and guidance to develop their confidence, competency and skills in identifying and assessing thinking skills and help improve the educational and lifelong learning outcomes for their pupils. Thinking skills are a key competency for lifelong learning and many national curricula consider thinking to be one of the key features but a needs analysis carried out by the project partners identified a critical gap in terms of support for teachers' pedagogical skills in the teaching of thinking. Three project objectives were identified: 1. Develop diagnostic and formative assessment tools in the form of an e-suite of audio, video and text resources to support the teaching of thinking and improve pupils’ ability and capacity to think at a high level; 2. Validate the tools across a wide range of school contexts and settings in partner countries to ensure they are transferrable, robust and accurate for use by both in-service and pre-service teachers; 3. Disseminate and encourage uptake of the tools by in-service and pre-service teachers across Europe and in so doing improve learning outcomes for their learners and a sustainable resource for the future. The project deliverables that arose out of these objectives were: - an e-suite of assessment tools developed by the project partners that support teachers in the diagnostic and formative assessment of thinking skills; - promotional material that supports dissemination of the tools to an established and developing local, regional and national audience; - three dedicated teacher training packages available to different national audiences that support the uptake and implementation of the assessment tools. The project outputs are freely and openly-accessible though partner websites. Positive impact of the development of the assessment tools has been shown at: 1. An individual participant and partner level in terms of an increased awareness of alternative pedagogical approaches and further strengthening of existing practice; 2. Class teacher and pre-service teacher level during the trial phase of the assessment tools in terms of increased levels of engagement in promoting and assessing thinking skills in the classroom; 3. Statistically significant improvements in teacher efficacy across a range of areas. Widespread and varied dissemination activities have taken place and positive feedback about the assessment tools and resources has been received at local, national and international levels.