TEACHER EDUCATORS’ UNDERSTANDING OF FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
Theme 4: Mathematics teacher educators’ conception of feedback Category 1 Feedback is reporting out to students
5.4 Alignment of teacher educators’ understanding of formative assessment and Ghana’s assessment policy
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5.4 Alignment of teacher educators’ understanding of formative assessment
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Table 5.3: Link between policy issues on formative assessment and findings from the study
Policy document consulted Policy issue raised Findings and interpretation
National Pre-tertiary Education Curriculum Framework (NaCCA, 2018)
Definition of FA In this study teacher educators viewed assessment as an ongoing activity that forms part of teaching and learning FA provides feedback and
information during a teaching and learning process while teaching is taking place and while learning is occurring National Pre-tertiary
Education Curriculum Framework (NaCCA, 2018)
Purpose of FA In this study, four teacher educators indicated that assessment could be used to gather evidence about the teaching and learning and to evaluate students’ acquisition of knowledge
FA serves the purpose of improving learning, and shaping and directing the teaching and learning process
National Teachers’
Standards for Ghana guidelines (National Teaching Council, 2017:30)
FA strategies
In this study, teacher educators recognised the importance of integrating and using multiple assessment methods and strategies Integrate a variety of
assessment modes into teaching to support learning:
examples, tests, quizzes, assignments/ homework, etc.
National Pre-tertiary Education Curriculum Framework (NaCCA, 2018)
Good assessment uses multiple methods.
Assessment should be Comprehensive National Pre-tertiary
Education Curriculum Framework (NaCCA, 2018)
Nature of feedback In this study, teacher educators’ feedback on students’ written work reports took the form of marks only Feedback should indicate
what is good about a piece of work and why it is good; also what is not good and how the work could be improved
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The results in Table 5.3 show that the meaning of FA provided by the National Council of Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA, 2018) is similar to the views held by the MTEs that FA forms part of the teaching and learning process. According to NaCCA, FA is a process which should occur during a teaching and learning process while teaching is taking place and while learning is occurring. This means FA should be viewed and understood as an integral part of teachers’ pedagogical activities and should occur before teaching, during teaching and after teaching. This demonstrates that the policy provides the base for informing and improving teacher educators’ assessment practices in mathematics.
In addition, the findings of this study suggest a close alignment between teacher educators’
understanding and the statement highlighted in the National Pre-Tertiary Education Curriculum Framework and the National Teachers’ Standards (NTS) for Ghana guidelines in relation to the purpose of FA. Table 5.3 revealed that FA is planned and designed to improve and shape teaching and learning of mathematics. This means that through the processes of assessment, information gathered aids the assessor to identify gaps in the teaching process, and based on this information support is given to students with the aim of enhancing their learning through instructional modification where necessary.
Teacher educators are required to employ FA techniques during their instruction, and it is thus imperative that these educators have a clear understanding of these techniques or strategies. As presented in Table 5.3 the Ministry of Education (National Teaching Council., 2017) in Ghana stated in the NTS document that teachers should incorporate a diversity of assessment modes into teaching to support learning. This view was reaffirmed by the NaCCA that a good assessment uses multiple assessment methods. These two statements align with each other and confirm statements in the literature (Siegel & Wissehr, 2011) that there is a need for teachers to adopt multiple assessment methods, because a single method of assessment will only measure some aspect of students’ learning.
Matching these policy issues with teacher educators’ conception on FA methods or strategy revealed that teacher educators recognised the importance of adopting a variety of assessment modes into daily practice in order to respond to students’ learning needs. Teacher educators exhibited understanding of diverse methods of assessment by citing quite a number of them (for example, quizzes, presentations, observations). This demonstrates that teacher educators’
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understanding of assessment methods are uniform with what is expressed in the two policy documents regarding assessment. Teacher educators’ knowledge of these methods has the potential of helping them to take note of gaps in learning and to address these in the planning and delivery of the next set of instruction.
Table 5.3 further shows that the analysis resulting from teacher educators’ knowledge regarding feedback suggests points of correspondence with some aspects of the assessment policy:
understanding of assessment as a form of communication to learners (feedback on their learning);
feedback to teachers on their teaching; and feedback to the curriculum designer (on the curriculum) and to district, regional and national education directorates (on the use of resources). According to the teacher educators, assessment creates the opportunity for teachers to provide feedback to students about their written work and to improve learning. This means that feedback is understood as a form of communication to students on a completed assessment task. In addition, teacher educators recounted that assessment feedback enables them to evaluate their teaching methodology and self-evaluate their teaching. Teacher educators’ responses about the concept of feedback indicates that their (teacher educators’) understanding was aligned with the requirement of the assessment policy (National Teaching Council, 2017).
By comparing teacher educators’ responses to the assessment policy, the researcher argued that the understanding of teacher educators involved in this study of FA aligns with the assessment policies raised in the various documents consulted. For example, teacher educators mentioned that
“formative is a daily activity which forms part of teaching”, which indicates that they have an idea that FA should occur during a teaching and learning process, while teaching is taking place and while learning is occurring.