Formative Assessment According to Experts: A Delphi Approach

• In Event: Present and Future Formative Assessment Practices

Abstract

Although research indicates the salience of formative assessment practice in learning gains (Black and Wiliam 1998), the potential benefits of formative assessment are often unrealized in classroom practice due to lack of accessible materials and teacher capacity (Herman & Baker, 2006; Heritage & Yeagley, 2005), among other elements. The interstitial space between the rhetoric and reality of formative assessment practice has been a rich field for both theoretical (e.g. Black & Wiliam, 2009) and empirical (e.g. Phelan et al., 2011) research over the last two decades.
As the field develops, there is a need for a synthesis establishing expert consensus and remaining areas of debate. This study reports findings from a Delphi study of formative assessment experts, focusing on their understanding of formative assessment practices, tools, purpose, and training needs. The normative purpose of Delphi studies is to establish a field consensus, a process which has been shown to be more accurate than the statistical mean available through survey analysis (Clayton, 1997).
Data for this study was derived from a four round Delphi process. Experts were selected for participation through a quantitative database search process, in which the most cited authors in the field of formative assessment were assessed in terms of role and scholarly contribution. Five out of the top six elected to participate in the study. The first phase generated a range of responses to original questions regarding the purpose, goals, and process of formative assessment, coded based on theme (Schmidt, 1997) and returned to the experts for member checking in phase II. In order to determine areas of consensus and debate, in phase III and IV participants rated the relative importance and relevance of each statement, commenting on areas of disagreement (Holsapple and Joshi, 2002).

Extensive survey findings pertain to expert conceptions of formative assessment goals, characterizations, practices, use, and training needs. Examples include areas of strong agreement among experts, including that formative assessment practice should be characterized by feedback on student performance that are aimed at improvement, not grades or other forms of evaluation, and the importance of teacher questioning and teacher-student discussion as formative assessment practices. Areas of continued debate include the use of professionally designed tests or other quantitative measures in formative assessment practice, external uses of formative assessment (such as by administrators to target professional development), and the role of teacher content knowledge.

This study has significant implications in terms of research and policy. First, it provides a quantitative accounting of what the selected experts deem is most important in terms of formative assessment practice, tools, goals, and training needs. Second, it establishes remaining areas of debate and strong disagreement that emerged regarding certain goals and the use of particular tools. Finally, in codifying best practices it provides a context for policy discussion around creating salient systems of formative assessment.

Author

• Kathryn N. Hayes, California State University - East Bay