Characteristics of improved formative assessment practice

Catarina Andersson,Torulf Palm

doi:10.1080/20004508.2016.1275185

Abstract

ABSTRACTAn earlier study showed that the changes in teachers’ classroom practice, after participation in a professional development program in formative assessment, significantly improved student achievement in mathematics. The teachers in that study were a random selection of Year 4 teachers in a Swedish mid-sized municipality. In the present study, we analyse and describe the characteristics of these changes in classroom practice, which were based on a combination of various strategies for formative assessment. Data were collected through teacher interviews and classroom observations. The teachers implemented many new activities that strengthened a formative classroom practice based on identifying student learning needs and modifying the teaching and learning accordingly. The characteristics of the changes the teachers made reveal the complexity of this formative assessment practice and why such developments of practice are likely to require major changes in most teachers’ practices. We also discuss how such changes in practice afford new learning opportunities.

Highlights

BackgroundSeveral research reviews have demonstrated that formative assessment can substantially improve student achievement (e.g. Black and Wiliam 1998; Hattie 2009, 297)
There is no clearly agreed-upon definition of formative assessment that all researchers adhere to (Dunn and Mulvenon 2009; Filsecker and Kerres 2012; Good 2011), but the following conceptualisation by Black and Wiliam (2009) captures the meaning of many definitions found in the literature: Practice in a classroom is formative to the extent that evidence about student achievement is elicited, interpreted, and used by teachers, learners, or their peers, to make decisions about steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or be better founded, than the decisions they would have taken in the absence of evidence that was elicited. (Black and Wiliam 2009, 9)
We provide information about the practice pertaining to the whole group of teachers

Summary

Introduction

BackgroundSeveral research reviews have demonstrated that formative assessment can substantially improve student achievement (e.g. Black and Wiliam 1998; Hattie 2009, 297). Some researchers focus on the teacher using tests to gather evidence of student learning, with subsequent adjustment of instruction. Some focus on teachers’ feedback given to students based on the gathered evidence on student learning. Others focus on the students’ role in the formative assessment process This role might be that of self-regulated learners, which includes self-assessment and subsequent actions to attain the learning goals (Zimmerman 2002). The reviews show strong relationships between student achievement and formative assessment strategies such as teachers’ adjustment of teaching based on collected evidence of student learning (Yeh 2009), feedback (Hattie and Timperley 2007), self-regulated learning (Dignath and Büttner 2008), self-assessment using rubrics (Panadero and Jönsson 2013), and peer-assisted learning (Rohrbeck et al 2003). Some scholars researching these aspects of formative assessment use the term formative assessment (or assessment for learning), while others use denotations specifying the specific focus, for example, “feedback”

Methods

Results

Conclusion