Formative Assessment in Hands-On STEM Education

This chapter serves as an introduction to transdisciplinary learning, Integrative STEM Education, and current methods for infusing formative assessment into hands-on instruction at the elementary level. Subscribing to the approach that formative assessment is a process that takes place in the classroom to enable learning, the chapter discusses the use of engineering notebooks, competency-based assessment, and qualitative assessment (rubrics and portfolios) in the context of formative assessment while facilitating hands-on learning opportunities. In addition to introducing each of these topics from a research and literature perspective, examples are provided and discussed from a practical perspective. No one formative assessment is better than another, however, one type may be more practical due to the teacher's willingness to try new things, development of students, standards teacher is measuring, type of lesson/unit, time, available resources, and associated costs.

Developing Student Agency to Support Learning-Trajectory-Based Formative Assessment

High-quality formative assessment practices depend on teachers having a clear sense of learning goals, an understanding of the learning trajectories students progress along toward these goals, criteria for assessing students' progress, and ways of using this information to inform instructional decisions. In this chapter, the authors describe efforts to support teachers' practice with a focus on learning trajectory-based formative assessment. These professional development efforts moved away from delivering professional development to teachers and evolved into professional learning with teachers as co-researchers and co-designers. The authors discuss this collaborative inquiry approach to supporting elementary teachers' understanding and use of learning trajectory-based formative assessment in mathematics classrooms, and share examples of the various forms of inquiry developed, and ways in which teachers engaged in these activities as part of the collaborative inquiry.

Formative Assessment in a Teacher Education Course

Although many teachers are sympathetic to critical literacy's social justice agenda, they are often unsure about how to implement it in their classrooms. This is particularly so in contexts where increased accountability requires standardized forms of assessment. The challenge for teacher educators is to find ways to support student teachers and teachers who are new to critical literacy. The chapter focuses on how postgraduate students new to critical literacy learn to use this approach with young children. The chapter explicates the ways in which formative assessment is practiced as part of a critical pedagogy to support students' understandings of critical literacy, it describes how low-risk opportunities to put critical literacy into practice are provided, furthermore it considers the ways in which dialogue works to support inexperienced critical literacy teachers and finally examines the benefits of formative assessment practices within a critical pedagogy from a teacher educator perspective.

Formative Assessment on Writing

The purpose of this chapter is to address formative assessment in writing in the elementary grades, K to 5. The chapter will include the following sections: (a) An introduction that will present and explain assessment purposes with a clear description and explanation of formative assessment and its difference from summative assessment; (b) Common formative assessments used in writing and research that supports their effectiveness; (c) Principles of formative assessment and how those can be used with specific examples from classroom settings; (d) Recommendations for practice, and (e) Future research directions.

Supporting Elementary Mathematics Teacher Candidates' Use of Divergent Formative Assessment

In this chapter, the authors consider the purposeful design of two mathematics content courses (Content 1 and Content II) and one methods course (Methods) as a means of helping teacher candidates (TCs) learn about divergent formative assessment (DFA), which seeks to explore what students understand rather than only if they understand a concept or skill. The authors leverage the research of groupworthy tasks and the Rights of the Learner to describe three tasks they use to help TCs learn mathematics through problem-solving and to learn to teach through problem-solving. The chapter outlines three commonalities across the courses: 1) Shifting from implicit to explicit and informal to formal practices of DFA that reflects teaching through problem-solving; 2) Using DFAs to transition TCs' identities from learners to teacher-learners; and 3) Supporting TCs' self-assessment through DFAs in multiple ways.

Learning the Parallelogram Area With Technology Supported by Formative Assessment

This chapter presents an empirical investigation in which we developed formative assessment strategies with mathematical tasks using technology. The study is interpretative in nature, in a case study format. We designed assessment strategies in a collaborative work context, performed in a Mathematics classroom with 5th-grade students. Evidence shows that the use of peer assessment has had an impact on the learning of the parallelogram area with the help of the written feedback provided by their peers and the contact with the work of their colleagues, they managed to develop a conjecture for the parallelogram area.

Don't Assess a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree

The heterogeneity of students in today's classrooms present many obstacles when it comes to formatively assessing learning. The formative assessment cycle affords teachers numerous opportunities to measure student progress towards objectives, provide timely feedback, and make necessary adjustments to instruction. Formative assessments also provide considerable value to students, in the form of learning engagement, and tracking their own progress and planning of future steps. Due to the value of formative assessments in making decisions and supporting students, it is necessary that educators plan and utilize equitable assessment practices to eliminate unnecessary barriers students may face. The chapter will therefore discuss the obstacles that variable learners may experience that impede their inclusion in classrooms, the importance of the universal design for learning in ensuring engagement and multiple means of action and expression, and finally, bring awareness to students with disabilities and the importance of accommodations and modifications in their success.

Empowering Students and Teachers Through Formative Assessment

In this chapter, the authors provide a formative assessment model geared toward supporting what Carol Dweck called a growth-mindset. The authors describe the model in detail, then describe an action research study in which they collaborated with public school teachers to put the model to work with high-achieving, second grade students in the context of reading groups. Finally, the authors provide key results from the implementation and make recommendations for practitioners interested in using formative assessment to promote growth-mindset.

Making the Leap

The concept of assessments has become conflated with standardized summative exams such as state benchmarks. Schools are under significant pressure to exhibit proficiency on said exams. The inability to do so results in dire consequences (e.g., state receivership, school closures, etc.). As a result, school leaders might make the conscious decision to modify curricula and assessment to best reflect the upcoming exam. This practice shifts and dilutes the thinking around effective assessment practices. Teachers come to view assessments as opportunities more so for information recall rather than instances to promote greater metacognition. This document offers insight into how schools can begin to shift their thinking around assessment practices and create a culture that supports assessment as learning.

Summative Literacy Assessments and How They Imagine Children

As an international team of scholars, we have individually and collectively encountered a range of summative and formative assessment practices. Some of these assessment practices have originated from other parts of the world as policy practices increasingly entail global borrowing. We open this chapter with two compelling views of childhood; one places the onus on leading, directing, and controlling children's learning; the other views learning as idiosyncratic, unpredictable, and stunningly contingent on each child's vision of the world. We then introduce readers to a summative assessment associated with three countries (Australia, South Africa, and the United States) to explore how the use of these assessments contributes to the proliferation of particular views of childhood. Finally, we discuss the use of three formative literacy assessments that have gained international attention and present alternative visions of childhood and literacy learning.