形成性评价（Formative Assessment）的本质及其对教与学的影响

长期以来,很多学者一直倡导指导教学的评价,即通过评估学生需求和监测其学习进展,适当地设计学习顺序,调整教学策略,改良学习计划,以便有效地促进学习目标的完成。本研究调查了形成性评价在美国中学科学课中的实施情况,并分析其对学生学习进步的影响。研究表明,教师都在努力使用形成性评价来指导教学,而学生取得的成绩各不相同。     

Reading on Screen: Exploring Issues in Reading for Information with CD-ROM

This article describes the insights gained by a group of primary teachers investigating the implications of CD-ROM for English with their KS2 pupils. As part of the IT in English project, they researched pupils' use of the CD-ROM and its effect on their learning. They developed effective strategies to help pupils cope with the reading demands and edit their own texts. Positive effects on critical reading, collaboration, and use of conventional information books were observed.     

Do trainee teachers harm pupil attainment? Isolating the effect of pre-service teachers on contemporaneous pupil performance in ‘high-stakes’ tests

The prevalence of ‘pre-service’ or ‘trainee’ teachers in schools is rising in England, driven by the expansion of school-led routes to qualified teacher status and increasing demand for newly qualified teachers. This may have important implications for schools, which have historically been concerned with the impact of trainee teachers on their pupils’ attainment. There are, however, confounding factors which affect both the decision to host a trainee teacher and pupil attainment. We empirically model the impact of trainee teachers on contemporaneous pupil attainment in ‘high-stakes’ exams, exploiting unique data combining national administrative data on pupil test scores with a survey of schools’ involvement with initial teacher training over multiple academic years. We use school fixed effects to account for time-invariant school factors which may determine both schools’ teacher training decisions and pupil attainment. Counter to schools’ concerns, we find that pupil attainment in high-stakes assessments, on average, is not significantly affected by the number of trainee teachers. This is an important empirical finding, as it suggests that the rapid expansion of school-led teacher training is not likely to have a detrimental effect on pupil attainment in England, conditional on the set of schools that choose to engage with initial teacher training remaining similar: trainee teachers may still affect pupil attainment in schools that do not currently participate in initial teacher training, as these schools are typically more constrained.