What Teachers Find Useful About Learning Progressions for Classroom Formative Assessment Practices

• In Event: 51.048 - Contemporary Research in Classroom Assessment

Abstract

Learning progressions (LPs) have been posited as tools for supporting teachers’ classroom formative assessment practices. This study contributes to a small, but growing, body of research exploring these hypotheses. Rather than prescribing how LPs should be used, we presented LPs as tools and observed how six high school physics teachers incorporated them into varied classroom formative assessment practices. Based on video-recordings of classroom observations, individual planning/reflection meetings, and teacher interviews collected in the second of a two-year study, we identify ways that teachers’ use of LPs was and was not consistent with researchers’ vision for the classroom utility of these tools. Using the same data, we also provide possible explanations for and implications of discrepancies between hypothesized and actual use.

Authors

• Michelle Marie Wooten, Michigan State University

• Alicia C. Alonzo, Michigan State University

• Julie Christensen, Michigan State University