TEACHER EDUCATORS’ UNDERSTANDING OF FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
Theme 4: Mathematics teacher educators’ conception of feedback Category 1 Feedback is reporting out to students
5.3 Teachers educators’ understanding of formative assessment
5.3.4 Mathematics teacher educators’ conception of feedback
Research has shown that FA necessitates feedback indicating strengths and weaknesses of the teaching and learning process (Bell & Cowie, 2001; Black & Wiliam, 1998a; Taras, 2009).
Supovitz (2012), posits that feedback is something about a student's development towards goals
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of learning, thinking processes and misconceptions. The literature indicates that FA refers to all assessment activities undertaken by teachers and their students during the teaching process to support students’ learning through feedback (Black & Wiliam, 1998a; Mkhwanazi, 2014). This means that teacher educators’ knowledge and understanding of feedback will determine the quality and nature of feedback that they enact in their modules. Data gathered from teacher educators revealed two perspectives on assessment information, which are: feedback is reporting back to students (section 5.3.4.1); and feedback is an instructional corrective tool (section 5.3.4.2).
5.3.4.1 Feedback is reporting back to students
The participants in the current study elicited Heritage's (2010b) assertion that assessment needs to provide actionable information for both teachers and students. Three teacher educators revealed that feedback is concerned with communicating assessment outcomes back to students. For example, Anani remarked that:
Without feedback, students will not know whether the assignment done is right or wrong or they have done the right quiz. It is about providing information to students on their shortfalls to be able to make a correction and move forward.
Peprah was quoted as saying:
Feedback is about telling students what they have done well and what needs to be improved.
In a similar manner, Sekyi explained that formative feedback enables individuals to make changes to his or her work based on the information received:
For instance, if you are working on an activity and you have been made to see that there is something amiss with what you are doing. Then certainly, as a human being, you need to improve upon what you were doing.
These three teacher educators are of the same view that feedback is about providing valuable information to students on their work, regarding what they are doing right (correctness) or areas
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that need to be worked on further, which allows them to see how they can improve. This is supported by Shute (2008), who conceived feedback as information communicated to a student and based upon which the student can alter his or her mindset with the sole purpose of improving learning. Regarding to Bansilal, James and Naidoo’s (2010) conception of feedback and its purpose, the three teacher educators only focus on the aspect of a teacher giving feedback to students and not much on students giving feedback to teachers, as illustrated in Figure 5.1.
Figure 5:1: Purpose of feedback model (adapted from Bansilal et al.,2010).
Figure 5.1 illustrates that feedback is a two-way stream; however, the teacher educators’ view is that of a one-way stream, from teacher to student.
5.3.4.2 Feedback is an instructional corrective tool
The literature has documented that feedback is crucial and forms an integral part of FA, which provides information to both teachers and students. FA refers to all assessment activities undertaken by teachers and by their students during the teaching process, with the intention of supporting students’ learning through feedback (Black & Wiliam, 1998a; Mkhwanazi, 2014). In agreement with this position, three of the teacher educators considered feedback as an essential
Learner does assessment
Teacher marks assessment
Teacher gives feedback to learner about what he/she did
Learner gives feedback to teacher about
who can do what
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resource for teachers to shape students’ learning through adjustment in their instruction. For example, Emily said formative feedback offers her the opportunity to revisit her teaching methodology after identifying that the majority of her students have a score below certain pass marks on the assessment task:
if you teach and assess (give quizzes or exercises) and maybe 75% of the students are getting below half of the total marks, then it means there is something wrong. So, as a teacher, I have to restrategise by using a different strategy or method.
Likewise, Wilson commented as follows:
… if I assess and the outcome tells me that particular understanding or concept has not been formed well, it helps me to quickly devise means to help them …
Fordjour also responded that:
Maybe that is what I said early on that, it gives you some information about your methodology and the way the student perceives your lesson. After every unit you try to assess yourself about your method …
MTEs Emily, Wilson, and Fordjour’s responses suggest that these educators recognise the importance of assessment data gathered from students. Their comments portray that assessment evidence gathered from students is a critical tool for teachers' self-evaluation and for improving teachers' pedagogy. Although they express themselves differently, when one sums up their comments it can be observed that the responses point to one key component of assessment, which is teachers’ self-assessment. This result therefore aligns with Oduro (2015), who explored assessment in a mathematics classroom in Ghana in a study of teachers' practices, and found that pupils' assessment results constitute an important factor in teachers' self-evaluation and improvement in their teaching methodology. Furthermore, in line with Bansilal et al. (2010), unlike the other three teacher educators Emily, Wilson and Fordjour’s conception of feedback is that of teacher to student and student to teacher.
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