11.4 Growing Success: Fundamental Principles & Learning Skills and Work Habits

11.4 Growing Success: Fundamental Principles & Learning Skills and Work Habits

Quick Summary: Growing Success is the largest pedagogy dimension on the MPT — 9 of the 21 pedagogy questions (43%) — and its first two chapters are the ones candidates most often skip. Chapter 1 sets out seven fundamental principles that govern every assessment decision in Ontario. Chapter 2 defines the six learning skills and work habits reported in Grades 1 to 12 and the E / G / S / N scale used to report them. Together they answer the two questions that anchor most pedagogy scenarios: is this practice defensible? and does this belong in the grade?

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Part 1: The Seven Fundamental Principles

Growing Success opens by stating that to ensure assessment, evaluation, and reporting are valid and reliable, and that they lead to the improvement of learning for all students, teachers use practices and procedures that:

1. are fair, transparent, and equitable for all students;
2. support all students, including those with special education needs, those who are learning the language of instruction (English or French), and those who are First Nation, Métis, or Inuit;
3. are carefully planned to relate to the curriculum expectations and learning goals and, as much as possible, to the interests, learning styles and preferences, needs, and experiences of all students;
4. are communicated clearly to students and parents at the beginning of the school year or course and at other appropriate points throughout the school year or course;
5. are ongoing, varied in nature, and administered over a period of time to provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate the full range of their learning;
6. provide ongoing descriptive feedback that is clear, specific, meaningful, and timely to support improved learning and achievement;
7. develop students' self-assessment skills to enable them to assess their own learning, set specific goals, and plan next steps for their learning.

How the Principles Are Tested

Pedagogy questions rarely ask you to recite the list. They present a classroom decision and ask which principle it upholds or violates:

Anchor phrase: the very first principle — "fair, transparent, and equitable for all students" — is the phrase most likely to appear verbatim in an option. It is the foundation on which the other six rest, and the principles as a whole are drawn from the Principles for Fair Student Assessment Practices for Education in Canada.

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Part 2: The Six Learning Skills and Work Habits

Growing Success places learning skills and work habits immediately after the fundamental principles, ahead of achievement, to signal their importance. Six are reported in Grades 1 to 12:

The Reporting Scale

Learning skills and work habits are reported with letter symbols, never with percentages or achievement levels:

$\textbf{E} = \text{Excellent} \qquad \textbf{G} = \text{Good} \qquad \textbf{S} = \text{Satisfactory} \qquad \textbf{N} = \text{Needs Improvement}$

The Separation Rule (the single most tested idea in Chapter 2)

To the extent possible, the evaluation of learning skills and work habits — apart from any that may be included as part of a curriculum expectation — should not be considered in the determination of letter grades or percentage marks for subjects and courses.

In practice this means:

• Late submission is a learning-skills matter, reported under Responsibility. Deducting marks from a mathematics grade for lateness confuses a work habit with achievement of the curriculum expectations.
• Neat, organized presentation is reported under Organization unless organization is itself part of the expectation being assessed.
• Group participation is reported under Collaboration; the mathematics grade must still reflect what the individual student demonstrated about the mathematics.
• On the elementary report cards, the learning-skills section is placed ahead of the achievement section; in the Grades 9–12 Provincial Report Card there is a space for each learning skill in every course.

graph TD
    EV["Evidence gathered about a student"]
    EV --> ACH["ACHIEVEMENT of curriculum expectations<br/>Knowledge & Understanding · Thinking<br/>Communication · Application<br/>-> Levels 1-4 / percentage mark"]
    EV --> LSWH["LEARNING SKILLS AND WORK HABITS<br/>Responsibility · Organization · Independent Work<br/>Collaboration · Initiative · Self-Regulation<br/>-> E / G / S / N"]

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Applied Scenario

Scenario. A Grade 8 mathematics teacher assigns a proportional-reasoning investigation. Devin submits three days late. The work demonstrates a thorough grasp of unit rates and a correct, well-justified solution, but is untidy and was completed with no group input during class time.

How Growing Success directs the teacher.

1. Grade the mathematics on the mathematics. The achievement evidence shows thorough understanding and effective application, which is Level 4 work. Lateness is not evidence about proportional reasoning, so it does not reduce the achievement level (Principle 1: fair and equitable; Chapter 2: the separation rule).
2. Report the work habits where they belong. Lateness is recorded under Responsibility; the untidy presentation under Organization; the lack of in-class participation under Collaboration and Independent Work, as appropriate — each on the E/G/S/N scale.
3. Follow board policy on late and missed assignments for any consequences, rather than inventing a personal mark deduction (Principle 1: consistency and transparency).
4. Give descriptive feedback on both strands — one comment on the mathematics, one on the work habits — so Devin knows what to repeat and what to change (Principle 6).

The frequent distractor in this scenario type is "assign Level 2 because the work was late." That answer is wrong under Growing Success for exactly one reason: it lets a work habit contaminate the measurement of achievement.

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Study Strategy for This Dimension

With nine of the twenty-one pedagogy questions drawn from Growing Success, and with the pass mark requiring 15 of 21, this document alone can decide an attempt. Split your study across its named sections: Fundamental Principles and Learning Skills and Work Habits (this section), Performance Standards / the Achievement Chart, Assessment for Learning and as Learning, Evaluation (Section 11.3), and the two reporting sections on students with special education needs and English language learners (Sections 12.1 and 12.2).