Microcultures: The Role of Classroom Cultures in Effective Formative Assessment

• In Event: What Do We Mean When We Address the Concept of "Assessment Cultures"?

Abstract

Objectives:
Formative assessment has a strong theoretical rationale and empirical foundation as an effective way for teachers to support student learning (Bell & Cowie, 2001; Black & Wiliam 1998; Perrenoud, 1998; Sadler, 1989). While a good deal of research has focused on identifying, defining, and studying the effect of formative assessment practices, little is known about how the cultural context of a classroom interacts with formative assessment. The paper will provide information about how classroom contexts were established in 14 middle school mathematics and science classrooms. The research questions that guided this study were: (1) What types of norms/rules, routines, and tools do teachers implement to set the cultural context? (2) How are these norms/rules, routines, and tools established in the classroom? (3) What is the link between these aspects of classroom context and formative assessment practices?

Perspective:
The rules and routines that guide what teachers and students should do if they want to have a context that is suitable for learning can be considered a microculture established in the classroom. These rules and routines are expected to have an impact on students’ behavior and intellectual functioning. Since learning is a social and cognitive process, the paper will focus on understanding how formative assessment is affected by the classroom culture in which it is practiced, including how rules/norms, routines, and expectations (Bowers, Cobb, & McClain, 1999; Erickson, 1986; Wells, 1999) are established. The importance of the first days (Jackson, 1971), and even the first hours of the first day of a class (Boaler, 2015), are critical for helping students understand the teachers’ expectations and the rules and norms that will be followed.

Methods:
Fourteen middle-school classrooms were videotaped during the first weeks of the school year, starting on day one and continuing until each teacher indicated that she was confident that students were familiar with the cultural expectations of the class. These same classrooms were videotaped later in the school year during the implementation of an entire mathematics and/or science unit to capture the formative strategies that the teachers were using during the implementation of that unit.
We developed a coding system focusing on three dimensions: (1) cultural elements (e.g., task/activity, norms, routines, concepts, tools); (2) introductions to the cultural elements (introduction, explicit/implicit explanations); and (3) purpose of the cultural elements (e.g., academic, behavioral). The coding system was used to code the norming sessions.



Results:
Analyzing both sets of videos allowed us to make connections among: how teachers established their classroom contexts at the very beginning of the school year, the resulting characteristics of the classroom contexts, and how these characteristics affected how teachers implemented formative assessment on the everyday basis.

Significance:
This paper helps to improve our understanding of microcultures in the context of assessments in at least two ways, it helps to: (1) understand how the culture of a classroom is established; and (2) how the classroom culture may constrain or facilitate formative assessment. The paper can help to better understand whether effective formative assessment is linked to the cultural context of the classrooms.

Authors

• Maria Araceli Ruiz-Primo, Stanford University

• Deanna J. Sands, University of Colorado - Denver

• Heidi Kroog, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium