Research project Formative assessment (FA) has been shown to have the potential to substantially increase student learning but does not always do so. The long-term aim of the project is to develop an evidence-based theory on how FA impacts learning and achievement. In this pursuit, we aim at identifying mechanisms underlying the effects of FA when students are working individually with mathematical problems. Insights about these mechanisms may be used to design FA with the best effects on student learning.
Professor Gavin Brown, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Formative assessment is a classroom practice whereby teachers and/or students regularly identify student learning needs, and then adapt the teaching or learning to meet those needs.
Research overviews show that classroom practices that can be characterized as formative assessment can greatly improve student learning. But although average effects are very positive, formative assessment does not always improve student learning, and the research community still lacks a fundamental understanding of the underlying mechanisms that achieve the effects.
New insights into these mechanisms are essential in order to understand how formative assessment works to enhance learning, and also to design formative assessment practices that achieve the major effects on learning that research has shown to be possible.
The overall aim of the project is to develop an evidence-based theory on how formative assessment impacts learning and achievement by identifying mechanisms by which formative assessment impacts student achievement in mathematics. To identify those mechanisms, we will be examining the effects of characteristics of, and interactions between, fundamental processes in formative assessment, students’ mathematical reasoning, and changes in students’ motivation and mathematical achievement.
Hundreds of students will be participating in the project. Each student will be randomly selected to take part in one of six teaching practices. The characteristics of the formative assessment processes in these practices will differ, and the researchers will act as teachers.
We will study the effects of these practices on students’ mathematical reasoning, motivation and achievement. Data will be gathered via mathematics tests, student questionnaires audio recordings made of students thinking aloud as they solve math problems, and observations of the formative assessment practices. The quantitative data analysis will include structural equation modeling (SEM) of the relationships between variables, and qualitative data will be used to provide more detailed descriptions of the formative assessment practices and the students’ mathematical reasoning.
