Contrasting Assessment Tools: Teachers’ Current Assessment Practices as a Resource for Learning About Formative Assessment

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  In Roundtable Session: Conceptualizing Formative Assessment and Developing Formative Practice

Abstract

In the wake of No Child Left Behind teachers are under increasing pressure to increase student achievement outcomes. The accountability context of teachers’ work environment can influence their classroom assessment practices. In this paper I analyze science teachers’ conversations around artifacts of formative assessment to identify how opportunities for learning emerged within a long-term embedded professional development. The teachers’ use of an assessment tool that emerged from their work in an accountability context as a formative assessment provided opportunities for teachers to contrast their current assessment practices with formative assessment as presented by the professional development. This research suggests the benefit of contrasting teachers’ current assessment practices with that of formative assessment in the professional development context.

Author

• Sara C. Heredia, University of Colorado - Boulder