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
5.3.2 Understanding assessment purposes
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end of a learning period. It is used for grading, promoting, and measuring how much of the subject content the student has understood. It is worth noting that for them (teacher educators), FA supports learning while summative assessment is employed for instructional review and accountability purposes. According to teacher educators, it is not about the type/method of assessment used, it is about the time of administering that assessment which determines whether it is formative or summative.
This finding contradicts Black and Wiliam (1998a) early position that teachers lack understanding about the distinction between the formative function and summative function of assessment.
However, based on the teacher educators’ constructs, the researcher argues that not distinguishing methods of assessment suitable to be administered for formative purposes or summative purposes can lead to confusion in one’s understanding of FA.
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Data drawn from MTEs’ interviews revealed that three of them (Wilson, Sekyi, and Peprah) in explaining the function of assessment in the mathematics context mentioned one assessment purpose for FA. According to these teacher educators, assessment is planned and used in gathering evidence about instruction:
…to measure whether whatever you are teaching is going on well or also the method that you are applying in teaching them is also going on well, … (Sekyi)
I assess to find out their progress and understanding of the concept taught and to determine whether I am making progress in my teaching. (Peprah)
Wilson believes the aim of assessing students is to gather information about the learning process so that, based on the evidence gathered, one can make an instructional shift in addressing the learning needs of students:
Assessment is done to have a view of how learning is taking place. Remedial to be done to help the students, …
The comments made by Sekyi, Peprah and Wilson indicate that they consider FA as a means to inform teaching and learning. Although these three educators shared the same understanding that FA is for informing teaching and learning, they expressed themselves differently. As far as these teacher educators were concerned, the purpose of assessing students in mathematics modules is to inform pedagogical decisions. For example, Sekyi perceives assessment as an artifact that offers him the opportunity to evaluate his teaching methodology, while Peprah and Wilson viewed assessment as evidence gathering of students' understanding of the learned concept and their daily progress in meeting instructional goals. This belief is upheld by Oduro (2015), that assessment serves the purpose of guiding the pedagogical practices of the teacher as well as the teaching process, and also helps teachers to address their students’ thinking during instruction (Coffey et al., 2011).
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5.3.2.2 Formative assessment is for evaluating achievement of learning outcome
Gardner et al. (2010) observed that information generated from assessment has dual purposes: for improving performance and for accountability. In contrast, Abell and Siegel (2011) note that assessment has four purposes – diagnostic, formative, summative and metacognitive – and should be designed with one of these in mind.
Two MTEs (Anani and Emily) observed that assessment is about tracking and organising students’
achievements against learning outcomes. According to Anani, the primary purpose of assessment is to gather information to report the progress of students by placing value on students’ learning outcomes:
With assessment, we are trying to set a value on students' performance to determine their actual achievement. So, we assess to be able to know whether they have achieved what they have been taught, assessment is done for grading purpose …
Emily also stated:
To test students’ level of understanding of concepts.
These comments from Anani and Emily suggest that planning assessment intends to capture how much learning has taken place. Some studies have argued that there is no formal learning on the assessed subject after summative assessment (Dixson & Worrell, 2016). This means that the summative nature of the mid-term quizzes has formative purposes and sets the stage for effective teaching and learning. Emily and Anani’s conception seems to align with the position advanced by (Black & Wiliam, 2009) that summative tests provide teachers with the opportunity to gather evidence of students’ learning, and when employed correctly can prompt feedback which moves learning forward.
Abell and Siegel (2011) posit that a key purpose of assessment within the school is for tracking and analysis of students' progress to inform teachers’ decisions regarding ongoing teaching.
Fordjour opined that assessment offers him the opportunity to gather evidence about his students and for decision making:
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…., I assess in order to get information about the students and to make some decisions about the students.
Fordjour's response points to the intertwined nature of assessment, in that data produced can be interpreted and used for formative purposes or summative purposes or both. It is worth noting that Fordjour's response supports the position of Black (2013), who concluded that the formative and summative purposes of assessment can be so intertwined that they are mutually supportive rather than contradicting each other.
5.3.3 Formative assessment strategies that teacher educators exhibited knowledge of