Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment: A Research-Based Pedagogy for Teaching Science with Classroom Response Technology

Classroom response systems (CRSs) are a promising instructional technology, but most literature on CRS use fails to distinguish between technology and pedagogy, to define and justify a pedagogical perspective, or to discriminate between pedagogies. Technology-enhanced formative assessment (TEFA) is our pedagogy for CRS-based science instruction, informed by experience and by several traditions of educational research. In TEFA, four principles enjoin the practice of question-driven instruction, dialogical discourse, formative assessment, and meta-level communication. These are enacted via the question cycle, an iterative pattern of CRS-based questioning that can serve multiple instructional needs. TEFA should improve CRS use and help teachers “bridge the gap” between educational research findings and practical, flexible classroom strategies for science instruction.

Using Formal Embedded Formative Assessments Aligned with a Short-Term Learning Progression to Promote Conceptual Change and Achievement in Science

This study examined the effect of learning progression-aligned formal embedded formative assessment on conceptual change and achievement in middle-school science. Fifty-two sixth graders were randomly assigned to either an experimental group or a control group. Both groups were taught about sinking and floating by the same teacher with identical curriculum materials and activities. The experimental group received, in addition, three sets of formal embedded formative assessments with qualitative feedback as to how to improve their understandings aligned with an expected learning progression during instruction. The control group spent the corresponding time between new curriculum activities conducting curriculum-specific extension activities. Overall, the experimental group experienced on average greater conceptual change than the control group. The experimental group also scored higher on average than the control group on general achievement tests, especially the performance assessment. This study supported the contention, then, that embedding formal formative assessments within a curricular sequence built around an expected learning progression is a useful way to promote conceptual change along that learning progression in science classrooms.     

Aligning formative and summative assessments: A collaborative action research challenging teacher conceptions

Assessment innovations require explicitly challenging teachers’ assessment conceptions. In changing towards outcome-based curricula, aligning formative to new summative assessments is a challenge. This study, conducted in Dutch Agricultural Vocational Education and its new outcome-based summative assessments, aims to provide concrete insights into what teacher conceptions hinder the development of aligned formative assessment practices. In a structured collaborative action research, practitioners, researchers and consultants analyse teachers’ formative practices, identify underlying current conceptions and their misalignment to the new summative assessment system. An iterative process resulted in an overview of current conceptions versus required conceptions, showing required conceptual changes that are prerequisite for teachers to change towards formative assessment practices that are aligned to the new outcome-based summative assessment system.     

Intuitive Analysis of Variance – A Formative Assessment Approach

This article describes an assessment activity that can show students how much they intuitively understand about statistics, but also alert them to common misunderstandings. How the activity can be used formatively to help improve students' conceptual understanding of analysis of variance is discussed.     

形成性评估在大学英语教学中的应用

从建构主义理论出发,以实验的形式研究了形成性评估对大学英语教学的影响,指出形成性评估的优势和不足。同时,从英语教学实践出发,提出一套操作性较强的形成性评估方法。     

Formative assessment and teaching practice: the point of view of Italian teachers

Over the years the debate on the aims, approaches, and impacts of formative assessment has never stopped to grow. Parallel to this growth is the awareness that it is crucial to understand what conceptions teachers have of assessment in order to guarantee more effective teacher education. This paper tries to connect these two fields of research: formative assessment and teacher education through an analysis of teachers’ conceptions: What do teachers think about assessment? What aims do they pursue through it? Do teachers really distinguish between formative and summative assessment? On the backdrop of the formative assessment literature, the article reports on an exploratory research study. Limitations and issues are analysed in order to shed light on teacher education implication and on future educational research paths in the educational assessment field.     

形成性考核在应用型本科教学中的实施分析

形成性考核普遍应用于电大等开放教育中。本文详细分析了应用型本科院校的培养目标、教学特点,结合考核现状及其单纯依靠终结性考核的弊端,提出全日制本科教育也应该实施形成性考核,并从形成性考核的形式、内容等方面分析了实施形成性考核的必要性,并提出实施形成性考核需要注意的问题。     

大学英语写作教学中的形成性评价

形成性评价注重对学生的学习过程进行行为研究性的评价,并及时提供反馈,调整课堂教学方法与手段,满足学生的智力需求.它有着科学的概念、特点及其评价手段,将其恰当地运用到大学英语写作课堂的教学实践中进行检验与评估,能及时地引导学生的写作决策与自身评价,激发学生的写作兴趣,增强学生的写作自信心,显著地改善教学效果,有效弥补当前大学英语写作教学中的一些不足,并帮助学生成为自主高效的学习者.     

Using embedded assessments to promote pedagogical reasoning among secondary teaching candidates

The purpose of this documentary account is twofold. First, we describe two strategic instructional assignments embedded in university courses at a large research institution in the United States that were designed to help teaching candidates move toward mastery. Second, we explicate candidates' performances on the assessments as well as evidence of the reliability of the assessments and scoring procedures. This case study provides evidence that advanced secondary teaching candidates are able to address instructional issues and engage in the kind of pedagogical reasoning more characteristic of experienced teachers. Further, this account indicates that despite some challenges, it is feasible for multiple course instructors in a research institution to implement and score reliable, valid embedded assessments.     

高职英语教学形成性评估研究

形成性评估是一种过程性、发展性评估,即根据教学目标,采用多种评估形式,跟踪教学全过程,反馈教学信息,提高教学质量,促进学生在知识、能力、素养上全面发展。这种评估方式关注学生在学习过程中的主体性和创造性,有利于外语教学方法、教学内容和相应竞争机制的改革。形成性评估形式包括课堂活动和课外活动记录、学习档案记录、访谈和座谈等。形成性评估内容包括：对学生的语言综合运用能力进行评估,对学生的学习方法、学习步骤以及学习策略进行评估,对学生的综合素质以及社会情感进行评估。     

英语专业综合英语课程中的形成性评价

形成性评价是对学生的学习过程进行评价,它可以为教师和学生及时提供反馈信息,既是保证教师教学质量的依据,也是提高学生学习效率的有效手段。将形成性评价应用于英语专业综合英语课程的教学中,有利于培养学生自主学习能力、提高英语综合运用能力。     

论形成性评价在外语口语教学中的引入

本文通过分析传统的口语评价所存在的问题,介绍形成性评价方式引入外语教学的基本理念,探讨了形成性评价在外语口语教学中的运用以及引入形成性评价的意义和评价中应注意的问题。     

An Analysis of Metaphors Used by Students to Describe Energy in an Interdisciplinary General Science Course

The meaning of the term energy varies widely in scientific and colloquial discourse. Teasing apart the different connotations of the term can be especially challenging for non-science majors. In this study, undergraduate students taking an interdisciplinary, general science course (n?=?49) were asked to explain the role of energy in five contexts: radiation, transportation, generating electricity, earthquakes, and the big bang theory. The responses were qualitatively analyzed under the framework of conceptual metaphor theory. This study presents evidence that non-science major students spontaneously use metaphorical language that is consistent with the conceptual metaphors of energy previously identified in the discourse of students in introductory physics, biology, and chemistry courses. Furthermore, most students used multiple coherent metaphors to explain the role of energy in these complex topics. This demonstrates that these conceptual metaphors for energy have broader applicability than just traditional scientific contexts. Implications for this work as a formative assessment tool in instruction will also be discussed.     

Science assessments for all: Integrating science simulations into balanced state science assessment systems

This article reports on the collaboration of six states to study how simulation‐based science assessments can become transformative components of multi‐level, balanced state science assessment systems. The project studied the psychometric quality, feasibility, and utility of simulation‐based science assessments designed to serve formative purposes during a unit and to provide summative evidence of end‐of‐unit proficiencies. The frameworks of evidence‐centered assessment design and model‐based learning shaped the specifications for the assessments. The simulations provided the three most common forms of accommodations in state testing programs: audio recording of text, screen magnification, and support for extended time. The SimScientists program at WestEd developed simulation‐based, curriculum‐embedded, and unit benchmark assessments for two middle school topics, Ecosystems and Force & Motion. These were field‐tested in three states. Data included student characteristics, responses to the assessments, cognitive labs, classroom observations, and teacher surveys and interviews. UCLA CRESST conducted an evaluation of the implementation. Feasibility and utility were examined in classroom observations, teacher surveys and interviews, and by the six‐state Design Panel. Technical quality data included AAAS reviews of the items' alignment with standards and quality of the science, cognitive labs, and assessment data. Student data were analyzed using multidimensional Item Response Theory (IRT) methods. IRT analyses demonstrated the high psychometric quality (reliability and validity) of the assessments and their discrimination between content knowledge and inquiry practices. Students performed better on the interactive, simulation‐based assessments than on the static, conventional items in the posttest. Importantly, gaps between performance of the general population and English language learners and students with disabilities were considerably smaller on the simulation‐based assessments than on the posttests. The Design Panel participated in development of two models for integrating science simulations into a balanced state science assessment system. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 363–393, 2012     

A typology of approaches to science teaching in schools

Bentley and Watts (1986) have recently argued that fundamental changes in science are necessary if girls’ needs and expectations in school science are to be met. They explore the implications of a radical shift, from a masculine to a feminist view of science, in terms of the context and conduct of school science, and warrant their attempt to reconstruct a feminist science largely by reference to ‘new paradigm’ research in the social sciences. By exploring the reasons underlying the adoption of ‘new paradigm’ methods in the social sciences, I argue that their explication of a feminist science lacks an important feature that would hinder its consideration as an alternative vision of scientific inquiry and as a basis for changing the content of science curriculum in schools. I further question their need to look to the social sciences as a model, when many social scientists have turned to the physical sciences for inspiration in attempting to reconstruct their own disciplines. By exploring the tenets most commonly held in present‐day science and examining the nature of scientific understanding, I argue that their view of ‘normal’ science is a highly simplified and incomplete stereotype of scientific inquiry. It is suggested that the nature of science is not the root problem, as Bentley and Watts would have us believe.     

信息技术教师的教育信念形成因素分析

新课程改革能否落实到信息技术课堂教学中的关键,是信息技术教师是否拥有与新课程的教学理念相一致的教育信念。而分析影响信息技术教师教育信念的形成因素,是找到促进信息技术教师教育信念变革的有效策略的本源性保证。文章构建了信息技术教师的教育信念与其形成因素之间的关系模型,并对文化环境、教育培训、自我反思等因素进行了详细的分析。     

论语言输出在形成性评价体系中的作用

形成性评价体系是一个全面合理的评价教学目标是否达到的有效方法,语言输出在形成性评价体系中更是发挥着不可忽视的作用。本文从语言输出的三个功能在形成性评价过程中的体现,详细分析了语言输出在形成性评价体系中的作用。     

形成性评价在基础教育教学中的应用研究

教育评价作为衡量教育优劣的手段,是随着教育的产生而发展的,随着基础教育新课改的进行,教育评价越来越引起人们的关注,重视形成性评价是现代教育评价的发展趋势。本文首先介绍了教育评价中的形成性评价的概念、类型以及作用,然后通过具体实例,详细阐述其在教学中的具体应用。     

基于网络自主学习的商务英语形成性评估体系的实证性研究

形成性评估是对学习者学习过程的全面测评。在商务英语教学中运用形成性评估跟踪、监控和评估学生的网络自主学习过程,根据评估结果引导学生进行学习,使评估过程和教学过程有机地结合起来,促进学生学习能力的发展和自主学习能力的提高,并在此基础上构建了商务英语的形成性评估体系。     

Six teaching orientations of Holocaust educators as reflections of teaching perspectives and meaning making processes

This study explored processes of curricular reinterpretation made by teachers who teach about the Holocaust. We conducted holistic narrative analyses of in-depth interviews with 31 American Holocaust educators. Six teaching orientations were identified: passionate historical, mythologizing-transforming, social-contemporizing, empathic-personalizing, riveting-shocking, and pragmatic-socializing. We offer vignettes for each orientation and compare them to other teaching perspective typologies, highlighting the novelty and utility of the presented typology. The findings demonstrate how narrative identity, meaning-making processes and teaching perspectives interconnect and lead teachers to reinterpret the Holocaust in their teaching. These findings have implications for teaching complex and value-laden topics.