One Teacher's Use of a Learning Progression to Generate Knowledge About Student Understanding of Physics

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

Abstract

Objective
Among the purposes proposed for learning progressions (LPs) is support for teachers’ formative assessment practices (e.g., Black et al., 2011). Researchers envision teachers using LPs to inform elicitation and interpretation of and responses to students’ ideas. However, teachers do not always take up research findings and tools as intended. We explore how one exemplary teacher appropriated a LP and associated items as part of his physics instruction.

Perspective
Cochran-Smith and Lytle distinguish researchers’ “knowledge-for-practice” from teachers’ “knowledge-of-practice,” which is “generated when teachers treat their own classrooms… as sites for intentional investigation” and “treat the knowledge and theory produced by others as generative material for interrogation and interpretation” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 250). We adopt Cochran-Smith and Lytle’s perspective as a lens through which to explore the knowledge that one teacher generated about his students’ physics understandings while engaged in the elicitation and interpretation of their responses to LP-based items.

Methods & Data Sources
This is a single case study of “Tim,” a physics teacher engaged in a curriculum design research project with the first author. On his own initiative, each year, Tim administered a set of items associated with a force and motion LP (Author, 2009), plus items on momentum and energy, to his students five times during a semester-long physics course.
After the second year of the project, Tim attended the NARST annual meeting, where he attended several LP-focused sessions. At NARST, he expressed frustration with how researchers talked about teachers’ potential use of LPs. After the conference, he participated in a video-taped interview with the first author, focused on this reaction.
Using grounded theory coding (Charmaz, 2000), both authors coded the transcribed interview, focusing on evidence of Tim’s use of the LP to generate knowledge about his students’ physics understandings.

Results
Consistent with our analyses of Tim’s work with mock LP-based score reports (Author, 2014a), we found that the LP-based items were useful to him, but not as envisioned by researchers. Diagnosing students’ LP levels was of little value to him, as it did not provide the knowledge he needed to make instructional decisions. However, by exploring students’ responses to individual LP-based items, Tim learned about specific difficulties his students were experiencing. Such opportunities were not afforded by the non-LP-based momentum and energy items.
The interview also revealed another use for the LP-based items: reporting to and communicating with administrators. Here, Tim found the LP-level diagnoses more useful, as they allowed him to demonstrate growth in understanding beyond what was possible with dichotomously-scored items testing grade-level standards. This was particularly valuable to him in the context of a new state teacher accountability law, requiring the collection of pre- and post-unit test data.

Significance
We argue that understanding the extent to which teachers find LP-based tools to be useful is crucial for the eventual impact of this construct on classroom practice. The case of Tim – a teacher with strong formative assessment practices – calls into question assumptions about the usefulness of researchers’ models for teachers’ use of LPs.

Authors

• Alicia C. Alonzo, Michigan State University

• Andrew R. Elby, University of Maryland - College Park