Secondary School Teachers’ Use of Formative Assessment Practice to Create Co-regulated Learning

Abstract

By applying formative assessment in the classroom, many teachers want to stimulate students to self-regulate their learning. Co-regulation in formative assessment can stimulate students’ self-regulated learning. However, teachers could apply formative assessment to create co-regulation in the classroom in different ways. This study investigates two research questions: (1) How much teacher and student formative assessment behaviour is planned or unplanned and implemented in the classroom, when formative assessment is implemented to stimulate students’ self-regulated learning? and (2) What do these teacher and student formative assessment behaviours that create co-regulation of learning look like? The formative assessment cycle was used as a framework to describe the formative assessment process in five phases: (1) Clarifying expectations, (2) Eliciting student responses, (3) Analysing and interpreting responses, (4) Communicating about responses and (5) Taking follow-up actions: adapting teaching and learning. Fourteen teachers planned and implemented formative assessment that created co-regulated learning to stimulate students’ self-regulated learning. Teachers’ analysed lesson plans, audio reflections and colleague observations showed that teachers and students used more formative assessment during the lesson than that was planned beforehand. In most of the formative assessment practices, students were stimulated by their teachers to actively engage in, and take responsibility for, formative assessment practice. This resulted in students showing formative assessment behaviour that included self-regulated learning. The results of this study can help teachers and researchers to better recognise and implement formative assessment that creates co-regulated learning to stimulate student self-regulated learning.