ENACTMENT OF AND RATIONALE FOR USING FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES
7.3 Teacher educators’ implementation of formative assessment
7.3.3 Involving students in assessment
Facilitating students’ involvement in FA can be achieved by providing them with the opportunity to regulate their own learning and be actively involved as resources for one another by giving them the chance to evaluate and judge the work of their peers. According to Du Plessis, Marais, Van Schalkwyk and Weeks (2011), the learning process is enhanced when students learn more about themselves and how to improve their performance through peer assessment and self-assessment.
This theme therefore discusses how self- and peer assessment were enacted by teacher educators during their lessons.
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7.3.3.1 Providing an opportunity for student self-assessment
In practice self-assessment goes beyond students simply checking answers on a multiple-choice test and grading themselves. It is a process where students monitor and evaluate their thinking when learning to identify strategies that improve understanding (McMillan & Hearn, 2008).
According to Cauley and McMillan (2010), while teachers provide feedback they can promote self-assessment by asking questions that encourage self-monitoring. The notion of promoting self- assessment through teachers' feedback and questioning is exemplified in the excerpt below from Emily’s observed lesson on number bases, when solving the sum 435 + 325.
Emily said to her students that they had 8 bundles of 5 sticks: “What should we do with it?” A student replied “You put them into 10s." Emily then asked “Why do you want to put them into 10s? Explain.” The student replied “I wanted to convert it from Base 5 numeral to Base 10.” Emily said “You do not have to convert into Base 10. We are working in Base 5, so count 5 of the 8 bundles of 5 sticks and put them together. What do you have now after counting?” After counting the student replied “One bundle of 5 bundles of 5 sticks and 3 bundles of 5 sticks”.
Emily’s questioning strategy aided in identifying her student’s misconception. It was clear that the student was having difficulty in grasping the idea of an alternate number system, which was Base 5. This misconception might have occurred as a result of the student retrieving the wrong schema without recognising the error. The excerpt illustrates how Emily supported and set up students’
self-assessment. For instance, she used the student response to explain the procedure to solve the question, thereby establishing a common understanding of how to solve the problem without necessarily providing the answer.
According to Ho (2015), teachers can implement self-assessment in their instruction through peer feedback. Thus, based on classroom observation, some teacher educators also adopted peer feedback as a strategy to implement self-assessment among students. The construct of peer feedback in this study refers to the degree to which students give reflective criticism (Falchikov, 2001) to others' work. For example, in Fordjour’s lesson on distances along great and small circles, an application of trigonometry, he asked his students to compute the circumference of latitude 300 South. After the students had worked for about 5 minutes, he asked the class “How are you going to find the radius of the small circle?” A student responded “You have to divide the earth's radius
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by two [ 6400 ÷ 2].” Fordjour asked “Which radius? Is he correct?”. “No”, another student replied, then commenting “Sir, we have to find the small circle radius using [the formula] r = Rcos α.”
Fordjour then redirected the conversation to the whole class, and emphasised that a small circle's radius is always calculated using 𝑟 = 𝑅𝑐𝑜𝑠𝛼. The other student's reaction and comment on how to compute the radius of the small circle was corrective and informative, which gave his peer and others the opportunity to relook at their work and effect the needed changes. Fordjour’s action of asking his class whether the result from the first student was right or wrong can be viewed as passing the evaluative responsibilities to his students, by encouraging them to affirm an answer to a problem without having to directly mark each other’s responses.
Likewise, Peprah nurtured self-assessment among her students by using her own experience. In the closing stage of her lesson on ratio, proportion, and percentages she asked her students to take a sheet of paper and assess her lesson by writing down their impression of her performance in the lesson. She said:
Pick a sheet of paper and write some of the things you think I did right and what I did not do well so that I can improve next time. Do not write your name on the paper.
Peprah's action was a good example for her students to self-assess their work and to improve from it. Students' assessment feedback was to assist her in making an instructional adjustment, with the aim of meeting the learning needs of her students. By telling her students not to write their names down it can be seen that she wanted her students to feel free to give honest feedback, without any fears.
Although data from the observed mathematics lessons revealed that students were actively engaged in the lecture activities, it was not clear from the researcher’s perspective as to how students actually self-assessed their own learning. Therefore, the researcher concludes that there is no evidence of how students employ their mathematical knowledge for making judgements about their own work.
172 7.3.3.2 Fostering peer assessment
Teacher educators recognised interaction as an effective way of stimulating mathematics learning by actively involving students as resources for one another. It was evident from the lesson observations that peer marking was one approach that teacher educators adopted in promoting peer assessment in this study. For example, Emily, one of the participating educators, integrated and activated students as resources for each other through peer marking. She made her students exchange their assessment workbook with their colleagues for marking, as evident in the following transcript excerpt:
Exchange your book with your neighbour and make sure you make meaning out of your neighbour’s work. Check your neighbour’s grammar, the concept and the steps used …
Peer assessment was implemented in this case through peer marking. The criteria used in assessing their colleagues’ work was based on language and steps required in teaching integers since the module she was teaching was Methods of Teaching Basic School Mathematics and the lesson was on teaching Grade 6 learners how to add two integers together using the number line model.
Peer assessment is not only about grading procedure, but forms part of the learning process where skills are developed (Dochy, Segers, & Sluijsmans, 1999). Oral presentations are recognised as a common and useful tool for peer assessment (Carless, 2013). Based on the classroom observation, it was evident that peer assessment was also implemented by teacher educators through paired activity or group projects during their pedagogical practices. For example, Wilson enacted peer assessment in his lesson through a group presentation by his students. Students' presentations were based on the topic matrices. Wilson divided his students into four groups, with each group presenting on a different aspect of the subject matter (matrices). Groups took turns to present on areas concerning the topic, and each group's presentation was assessed. The first group of students assessed the contributions of the following groups towards the project. Other students were given the opportunity to comments or ask questions based on the presentation. Comments from peers aided their colleagues in discovering for themselves different ways of presenting or solving a problem; peer assessment as an FA method can be observed as part of the self-assessment process, and serves to inform the self-assessment.
173 7.3.4 Observation of students’ hands-on activities
According to Chan (2009) observation occurs during on-going activities of teaching and learning and the interaction between teacher and students. With direct observation, the teacher or assessor observes the students performing the assessment task, while he or she goes around to see if the students can perform the task that has been assigned to them properly. Classroom observation revealed that teacher educators frequently utilise direct observation as an effective means of gathering feedback about their teaching and students' understanding, as students work on assessment tasks individually or in groups. Data generated by teacher educators were used to fine- tune their pedagogy to cater for students’ learning needs.
Classroom observation also showed that through observation, teacher educators could ask direct and purposeful questions of students who were inattentive. For example, Emily directed her students to solve the sum 435 + 325 using bundles of sticks during her lesson on teaching Grade 6 learners number bases (methodology module). As students worked on the assessment task, she called on a student to tell the class her answer when she noticed that said student was not paying attention:
Emily calls on Joy (not actual name): Tell the class what you had as an answer?
Student: Seven bundles of 5 sticks and eeeee …
Emily: Is that all? You see, I saw that you were not here; you were not paying attention.
Teacher educators adopted this strategy (observation) to gather information about the teaching and learning process, and on the basis of these data generated instructional modifications to address the learning needs of the students. However, there was no evidence of what the objectives of the observation assessment are, and assessment criteria were not made known to students. According to Chan (2009), to design a good direct observation assessment, the objectives of the observation assessment as well as assessment criteria should be made known to the students.