By the time a task is submitted, it is too late to discover whether the right thinking was designed into the learning.
This is a familiar leadership moment. Student work arrives. The products are complete. The assessment is ready to mark. Then the team starts asking whether students showed judgement, ownership, revision or real understanding.
Sometimes the evidence is there. Sometimes it is not. But when it is missing, the problem may not be the students. The task may never have required the capability to become visible.
The evidence at the end is shaped by the design at the beginning.
The Evidence-Rich Design Chain is a simple way to think about this: curriculum intent, capability demand, learning design, visible evidence, feedback and growth.
Start with curriculum intent. What is the learning for? Then name the capability demand. What should students become more capable of doing with that learning?
Then design the learning so that capability is required. Do not just hope students will show judgement. Build a moment where they have to compare, verify, choose, revise or defend.
Then decide what evidence will be visible. Not everything. Just the evidence that reveals the capability that matters most.
Finally, use that evidence for feedback and growth. Evidence only matters when it strengthens the next step.
For example, if you want evidence of judgement in a research task, build in a moment where students compare two sources and explain which one deserves more trust. If you want evidence of ownership in a design task, build in a short defence of the final decision before submission.
Here is the move for this week. Take one task and ask: what evidence do we wish we had when the final work arrives?
Then move backwards. If you want evidence of judgement, where will judgement be required? If you want evidence of revision, where will revision be explained? If you want evidence of ownership, where will students defend the final work?
Visible Agency is designed before it is expected.
The evidence available at the end of learning is shaped by the design decisions made at the beginning.
Download the Visible Agency Leadership Paper at https://leecrockett.net/visible-agency.
