Formative Assessment and What Is Missing From Student Learning

• In Event: Present and Future Formative Assessment Practices

Abstract

The proposed poster will describe our case study data, their analysis, and our findings about formative assessment practices underway in California schools during this, the third phase of the FAM project. The poster will also describe two important contributions of the case studies to the project and our prototype system development. The first has to do with providing descriptions of thoughts and practices in use about formative assessment and student learning found in the mathematics’ classrooms of the case study sites. As a result, we have a better understanding of formative assessment as it is now practiced and could be practiced in schools in California.

The second has to do with contributions of the descriptions. Our analysis of them will show the degree to which existing use of formative assessment in classrooms helps or hinders student learning. We also better know how well these practice features in use match or do not correspond to the productive features of formative assessment practices argued for by researchers and test publishers.

Consequently, the poster will also discuss the theoretical perspectives we used in making sense of these experiences and our data. As Ragin (1992) notes, there is a necessary interplay between evidence collected and theory, which “helps us to produce theoretically structured descriptions of the empirical world that are both meaningful and useful.”

One of the concepts involved “mental models” and the manner in which they guide actions in the world (DiSessa, 1983). These models also guide formative assessment practices in mathematics in classrooms. It is a long-standing and persistent mental model in use in school mathematics’ classrooms. For example, we found, in 2012, like Lampert (1990), that:

Teachers tell students whether their answers are right or wrong, but few teachers engage students in a public analysis of the assumptions that they make to get their answers. Even, when teachers give an explanation rather than simply stating a rule to be followed, they do not invite students to examine the mathematical assumptions behind the explanation, and it is unlikely that they do so themselves.

We found other predictable practices that are in line with other classroom studies undertaken during the past decades (Carpenter, 1980; Davis, 1983; Hoetker & Ahlbrand, 1969). For example, the information gained by teachers from weekly interim assessments is only used to grade students. Teachers do not use these formative assessment results to consider a different path from the one laid out by district pacing guides to direct students’ learning and understanding of various aspects of algebra.

Finally, the poster will discuss aspects of the prototype system that will have to be created, which reflect more dynamic conditions of learning, challenge the predictable actions that appear to exist in classrooms, and will assist in increasing student learning and understanding. For the system to be used in classrooms, the system will also have to have elements that help teachers question their existing guides and practices and learn and develop new guides for actions based on these more dynamic conditions of learning.

Author

• Paul E. Heckman, University of California - Davis