Supporting Teachers' Formative Assessment Practices With Learning Progressions: Results of a Longitudinal Study

• In Event: 35.049 - Teachers' Use of Learning Progressions for Formative Assessment: Implications for Professional Development and Further Research

Abstract

Objectives
This paper reports results of a four-year, longitudinal study that supported high school biology teachers in designing, enacting, and reflecting upon formative assessments linked to a learning progression for natural selection.

Theoretical framework
When teachers elicit and respond to student thinking, they engage in formative assessment (Black & Wiliam, 1998). Some researchers have argued that learning progressions might be provided to teachers to serve as models for how understanding develops in a domain (Bennett, 2011; Heritage, 2008) and might support teachers in navigating formative assessment situations. In this sense, the learning progression serves as a map representing the complex terrain of student thinking within a domain. This paper seeks to determine how participation in a multiple-year professional development centered on a learning progression influenced teachersʼ ability to design formative assessment activities and, in turn, impacted student achievement.

Methods
Nine biology teachers (mean=11.7 years experience) at three high schools participated in the study between 2010 and 2014. The first year served as a baseline year; in each of the three subsequent school years, teachers participated in monthly, on-site professional development workshops facilitated by university researchers (Figure 1). The learning progression represented the ways high school students’ understanding of natural selection develops across the course of a unit on Evolution (Author, 2014b). Meetings focused upon teachers developing shared understandings about the criteria for effective design of formative assessments, scaffolded by the learning progression.

Data Sources
Formative Assessment Activities. Teacher-developed activities were rated according to six Likert items that evaluated the alignment of the activities with criteria for formative assessment assessment design. Standard deviations ranged from 0.07-0.71 across six raters.
Student Achievement. Student achievement linked to the learning progression was assessed each year of the study with a pre-post multiple-choice assessment. During the baseline year we administered a core set of 17 items (N=606; α=0.34), and in the final year we added an additional 8 items to increase internal consistency (N=477; α= 0.75).

Results
On average, teachers’ formative assessment activity ratings increased through the study from a mean rating of 3.61 (SD=1.31) to 4.07 (SD=0.39), indicating greater alignment between the activities and the critieria for formative assessment around which the professional development was designed. The decrease in standard deviation reflects convergence in formative assessment quality between years 1 and 4 (Figure 2).
Students of all teachers at all schools indicated an increase in student achievement (Figure 3).
An ANCOVA analysis indicated a statistical effect of year on posttest scores even with the effect of the pretest factored out (F(1, 1080) = 84.37, p-value < 0.001). These results indicate that students learned more in the final year of the study as compared to the students in the first year of the study.

Significance
Given the current focus on adopting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013), which are built upon a series of learning progressions, this paper illustrates the value of long-term, sustained professional development centered on learning progressions as a way to improve teacher practice and, in turn, student learning.

Authors

• Erin Marie Furtak, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Ruhan Circi Kizil, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Sara C. Heredia, Exploratorium Teacher Institute