Evaluation & Development of Teaching:

Continous formative assessment

Markku Hannula

Three basic types of assessment

• Diagnostic assessment (before teaching)• Formative assessment (during teaching)• Summative assessment (after teaching)

Formative assessment

• self-reflective process that intends to promote student attainment (Crooks, 2001).

• the bidirectional process between teacher and student to enhance, recognize and respond to the learning (Cowie and Bell, 1999) – > obseravtion in the classroom

• the feedback from learning activities is actually used to adapt the teaching to meet the learner's needs. (Black and Wiliam, 1998)

Constructivism and assessment

• Changes in learning and teaching approach– Student centered– Teacher as facilitator– Learning to learn

• Changes are reflected in assessment– From summative (exams) to formative– Feedback for development

Elements in formative assessment

• Observation• Reflection• Feedback• Student reflection• Student self-regulation

Questioning• Moyer & Milewicz (2002) gave prospective elementary

education teachers a task to interview individual pupils on mathematical concepts and later to reflect the audio-recorded interview.

• They identified three categories of questions used by the preservice teachers: 1. checklisting, where the interviewer proceeded from one

question to the next with little regard for the child’s response 2. instructing rather than assessing, which included (a) leading

questions that direct the child’s response, and (b) abandoning questioning and teaching the concept; and

3. Probing and follow-up, where different types of questions were used to invite or further investigate the child’s answer.

... is a skill to develop

• “when open-ended questioning is used and there are many right answers, the learning environment becomes complex and less predictable as teachers attempt to interpret and understand children’s responses” (Moyer and Milewicz’s 2002, p. 296).

• “preservice teachers have difficulty interpreting and responding to unexpected answers from children” (Moyer & Milewicz 2002, p. 296)

... is a skill to develop• “when open-ended questioning is used and there are many

right answers, the learning environment becomes complex and less predictable as teachers attempt to interpret and understand children’s responses” (Moyer and Milewicz’s 2002, p. 296).

• “preservice teachers have difficulty interpreting and responding to unexpected answers from children” (Moyer & Milewicz 2002, p. 296)

• Task: Ask the peer sitting next to you an open-ended question about assessment. Try to interpret and rephrase the response. Check if your peer accepts your interpretation.

What do you see?

What do you see? Try to notice something new.

Focus of attention

• “The more aware I can be of what students or teachers see, of what they are stressing and ignoring, the more help I can be in offering different foci for their attention.” (Mason 1998, p. 248)

Teacher’s skills to observe (Philipp & Sowder, 2002)

• novice and expert teachers have different competencies in observing mathematics teaching episodes. – prospective elementary teachers attend more to

mathematics content– teachers and mathematics educators focused

more on teacher and student.

Teacher’s skills to observe (Philipp & Sowder, 2002)

• novice and expert teachers have different competencies in observing mathematics teaching episodes. – prospective elementary teachers attend more to

mathematics content– teachers and mathematics educators focused

more on teacher and student. • Task: Watch a video clip on 3 students working

in a group. What do you see?

Assessing groupwork (Dunne & Bennett, 1990)

• Assessment of learning– Understanding of task– Which contributions lead forward

• Process skills– Ability to co-operate– Dialogue, who helps whom, is help aiding– Efficient use of resources available

• Affective domain: attitudes, motivation, enjoyment– The level of involvement of individuals in the task– Free riders? (can be high achievers)– Time spent off task, body language

• Evaluate also the task, to develope your ability to select, design and modify tasks

Teacher’s skills to observe (Philipp & Sowder, 2002)

• Task: Watch the video clip once more. Can you see something new in it?

Feedback

In order for a student to benefit from from feedback in academic tasks, the student must know

i. What good performance isii. How current performance relates to good

performanceiii. How to act to close the gap between current and

good performance(Sadler, 1989; according to Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick,

2006)

Self-regulation

• …”has been presented as a generic term used for a number of phenomena, each of which is captured by a different control system. In our judgment, self-regulation is a system concept that refers to the overall management of one’s behavior through interactive processes between these different control systems (attention, metacognition, motivation, emotion, action, and volition control).” (Boekaerts and Niemivirta, 2000, p. 445)

Self-regulated learning (Lemos, 1999)

• Learners set their own learning goals• Learners monitor, regulate and control their

own learning, motivation and behaviour– Need feedback; facilitate monitoring

• Student goals may be different from teacher goals (Boekarets, 1999)

Assessment & self-regulation (Nicol & Macfarlane 2006; based on Butler & Winne, 1995)

Teacher set task

Processes internal to studentDomain knowledge

Strategy knowledge

Motivational beliefs

Student goals

Tactics & strategies

Internal learning outcomes

External feedback Externally observable outcomes

Self-regulatory processes (cognition, motivation & behaviour)

Paths of internal feedback

Seven principles of good feedback practice: Facilitating self-regulation

(Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006)

1. Clarify what good performance is2. Facilitate self-assessment3. Deliver high quality feedback information4. Encourage teacher and peer dialogue5. Encourage positive motivation and self-

esteem6. Provide opportunities to close the gap7. Use feedback to improve teaching

Clarify what good performance is

• Students can monitor and control their own progress only if they know what is exopected of them– Explicate goals, criteria, expected standards– Understanding good performance often requires

mastery of the topic– Assessment criteria are sometimes difficult to explicate

• Make sure your assessment practice is aligned with the explicated goals

Facilitate the development of self-assessment (reflection) in learning

• Provide (more) structured opportunities for self-monitoring, e.g. self-assessment tasks– Explicate what feedback they want from teacher– Identify strengths and weaknesses of own work

before handing the work in– Selecting work for portfolio

• Opportunities to evaluate and provide feedback on peer work

Deliver high quality informationto students about their learning

• Provide feedback before it is too late to use it• Focus on improving process• In addition to strengths and weaknesses offer

corrective advice• Direct students to higher order learning goals• Praise, not only criticism• Relate feedback to goals, standards or criteria• Don’t flood feedback

Encourage teacher and peer dialogue around learning

• Dialogue is often needed to clarify feedback– Goals, expectations, how to reach goals

• Small group discussions about feedback• Peer dialogue enhances sense of self-control

over learning– No judgmental element

Encourage positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem

• Respect the individual• High stakes assessments influence orientation

– Performance goals/mastery goals• Grading may be less effective than feedback comments

– Grading has especially negative effects on low-ability students’ self-esteem

– Delay grading after feedback has been processed• Praising ability or intelligence may lead to beliefs of

fixed intelligence– >Learned helplessness (Dweck, 1999)– >Praise effort and strategic behaviours

Provide opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance

• Feedback should influence process and product

• Introduce multi-stage assessment with feedback after each level

• Allocate time for commenting drafts or rewriting selected pieces after feedback

Use feedback to improve teaching

• Diagnostic tests• Reflective practitioner

Developing oneself as a teacher

• “Teaching is fundamentally about attention, producing shifts in the locus, focus, and structure of attention, and these can be enhanced for others by working on one’s own awareness.” Mason 1998, p. 244.

Reflective practitioner (Schön, 1983)

• Reflective practice is a continuous process and involves the learner considering critical incidents in his or her life's experiences.

• Reflective practice involves thoughtfully considering one's own experiences in applying knowledge to practice.

Moments of reflection (Schön 1983)

• Reflection-for-action– Before teaching, clarify your goal and methods

• Reflection-in-action– Reflective reacting in classroom– Difficult (last phase of development)

• Reflection-on-action– After teaching– Interpret and analyze what has happened

References• Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998), Inside the black box: Raising standards through

classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2): 139-149• Boekaerts, M. 1999. Self-regulated learning: where we are today.

International Journal of Educational Research 31, 445-457• Boekaerts, M. and Niemivirta, M.: 2000, ‘Self-regulated learning: Finding a

balance between learning goals and ego-protective goals’, in M. Boekaerts, P.R. Pintrich and M. Zeidner (eds.), Handbook of Self-Regulation, Academic Press, San Diego, CA, pp. 417–450.

• Cowie, B., & Bell, B. (1999), A model of formative assessment in science education, Assessment in Education, 6: 101-116

• Crooks, T. (2001), The Validity of Formative Assessments, Paper presented to the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Leeds, 13-15 September

• Dunne, E. & Bennett, N. 1990. Talking and learning in groups. UK: Macmillan.• Dweck, C. 1999. Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality and

development. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.

References continued• Lemos, M.S. 1999. Students’ goals and self-regulation in the classroom. International Journal

of Educational Research 31, 471-486• Mason, J. 1998. Enabling teachers to be real teachers: Necessary levels of awareness and

structure of attention. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education 1, 243–267.• Moyer, P. S. & Milewicz, E. 2002. Learning to question: Categories of questioning used by

preservice teachers during diagnostic mathematics interviews. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education 5, 293–315

• Nicol, D.J. & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, Vol 31(2), pp.199-218

• Philipp, R. A.. & Sowder, J. T. 2002. Using eye-tracking technology to determine the best use of video with prospective and practicing teachers. In A.D. Cockburn & E. Nardi (Eds.), In A. Cockburn & E. Nardi (Eds.). Proceedings of the26th Annual Conference for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (Vol. 4, pp. 233-240). Norwich: PME.

• Sadler, D.R. 1989. Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science 18, 119 – 144.

• Schön, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.