No concept is more central to the work of teachers than the concept of growth writes ACER Chief Executive Professor Geoff Masters and Senior Research Fellows Dr Ken Rowe and Marion Meiers.

As educators we use many different terms to describe cognitive, affective and personal growth, including 'learning', 'development', 'progress' and 'improvement'.   However we describe it, the concept of individual growth lies at the heart of our work as a profession.   It underpins our efforts to assist learners to move from where they are to where they could be: to develop higher levels of reading ability, broader social skills, deeper scientific understandings, more advanced problem solving skills and greater respect for the rights of others.     

Closely linked to the concept of individual growth is our fundamental belief that all learners are capable of progressing beyond their current levels of attainment.   As educators we understand that children of the same age are at different stages in their learning and are progressing at different rates.   But we share a belief that every child is on a path of development.   The challenge is to understand each learner's current level of progress and to provide opportunities likely to facilitate further growth.

A professional commitment to supporting growth requires a deep understanding of growth itself.   What is the nature of 'progress' in an area of learning?   What does it mean to 'improve'?   What can be watched for as indicators of progress?   What are typical paths and sequences of student development?   Teachers who are focused on supporting and monitoring the long-term growth of individuals have well-developed understandings of how learning in an area typically advances and of common obstacles to progress-understandings grounded in everyday observations and experience and perhaps also informed by theory and research.

Studies of individual learners and their progress over time are known as 'longitudinal' studies.   Longitudinal studies track individuals across their years of schooling (and sometimes beyond school) and provide deeper understandings of learning than can be obtained from 'cross-sectional' studies that consider the achievements of different students at different times.  

By tracking the same individuals across a number of years of school it is possible to identify similarities in learners' patterns of progress.   Studies of this kind show that, in most areas of school learning, it is possible to identify 'typical' patterns of learning, due in part, no doubt, to 'natural' learning sequences (the fact that some learning inevitably builds on to and requires earlier learning), but also due to common conventions for sequencing school learning.    

The fact that most students make progress through an area of learning in much the same way makes group teaching possible.   However not all children learn in precisely the same way, and some children appear to be markedly different in the way they learn.   An understanding of typical patterns of learning facilitates the identification and appreciation of individuals who learn in uniquely different ways.

A map of typical progress through an area of learning provides a framework for describing and monitoring growth over time at the level of both individuals and groups.   Such a map makes explicit what is meant by growth and introduces the possibility of plotting and studying the growth of individual learners.

Download the map of numeracy learning in the early years of school developed as part of the ACER Longitudinal Literacy and Numeracy Study (LLANS).   The map describes how the numeracy skills of children in this study typically developed over their first three years of school.   (The initial national sample of 1000 children was drawn from 100 randomly selected schools.)   Growth in numeracy is described on the left of the map, from beginning numeracy skills at the bottom to more advanced skills at the top.  

The numeracy progress of children in the LLANS study is shown on the right of the graph.   Children's literacy levels were assessed on five occasions during this period.   The graph shows that, on average, children's numeracy skills developed most rapidly during their first year of school but developed little between November of that year and March of the following year (a period that included the summer holidays).

The LLANS example illustrates several important features of longitudinal studies.   Firstly, the focus in these studies is on understanding learning as it is experienced by learners.   Through longitudinal studies an attempt is made to understand the nature of growth within an area of learning across the years of school.   The use of research-based maps of learning to monitor and study children's progress stands in contrast to more traditional curriculum-based approaches that impose a list of learning objectives (or outcomes or competencies) that students are expected to learn and then test to see whether these objectives have been 'achieved'.       

Secondly, empirically-based maps of learning provide a basis not only for charting individual and group progress, but also for studying influences on children's learning trajectories.   The real potential of longitudinal studies lies in the opportunity they provide to understand factors associated with successful learning and rapid progress and factors that work to impede student growth.

Finally, an empirically-based map of learning provides a frame of reference for displaying and reporting individual and group progress.   Education systems and schools can use growth curves plotted against such a map to better understand and report the progress of particular groups of students.   Teachers and parents can use plots of growth trajectories to see and understand how learning is progressing for individual children.   In these ways, longitudinal studies provide a valuable tool in our professional efforts to promote and facilitate children's growth.    

This article was originally published in Educare News in May 2003 and is reproduced with the kind permission of that publication.

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