Dylan Wiliam

Dylan Wiliam – Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Education University College London

Wiliam is best known for writing Inside the Black Box with Paul Black and Bethan Marshall in 1998, which focused on formative assessment. He has also written two influential pamphlets on curriculum and assessment design for the SSAT. Wiliam has argued for reducing curriculum and developing formative assessment. He has been critical of high stakes testing as it dominates and skews teaching. Teachers only focus on what it takes to get the best marks rather what is ultimately the best for the pupil.

Wiliam argues that curriculum should be designed backwards from an end point. Wiliam stresses the importance of curriculum sequencing and basing this around the ‘logic’ of a subject. He is an advocate of designing curriculum around the ‘big ideas’ of a subject. He argues curriculum will work differently, for different schools, but that all assessment should be assessment for learning. Wiliam says that assessment should be used to make inferences about a student’s engagement with the curriculum as a learning progression or pathway, with assessment as a checkpoint along the way.

Wiliam focuses on test design and what conclusions can be drawn from tests. He states that you have to consider ‘the extent to which a test measures what it claims or purports to measure’. An important part of curriculum design is thinking about what types of assessment you want to use to report back accurately on how well the curriculum has been imparted. Wiliam advocates well thought out multiple-choice questions as an excellent diagnostic tool to test learning.

Critics of Wiliam have focused on how AfL has been oversimplified and turned into a classroom gimmick, rather than it being a genuine assessment. His focus on streamlining content has been criticised by those that believe that a body of knowledge is central to a strong curriculum.