Educational Designer

Testing Strategic Skills (TSS) was the project that introduced this. Driven by What You Test is What You Get, fully aligned support for a specific change was the key strategic design goal of the project.

Each TSS module supported teachers with:

• tasks that exemplify the new task type to come into the examination in the following year, with teaching hints, solutions and scored examples of student work. There must be enough task exemplars to show something of the variety to be expected from year to year in the examination. Scoring schemes and sample student work give deeper understanding. Handwritten student work helps build teachers confidence that "my kids could do that".
• teaching materials for the corresponding three weeks of teaching. The lesson materials must be designed for teachers moving onto unfamiliar ground, which means explicit detailed guidance. The essential pedagogical changes are on the inside of the back cover.
• professional development materials to support do-it-yourself sessions among teachers within a school, focused on the new pedagogical and mathematical challenges involved in the module. The DIY PD materials should be designed to focus on the new mathematical and pedagogical challenges, working through enjoyable discussion activities linked to the lessons.

All three elements were designed by the same joint Shell Centre-JMB team, which also designed the tasks for the 'live' examinations.