Characterizing the formative assessment enactment of experienced science teachers

Abstract

Teachers' use of formative assessment (FA) has been shown to improve student outcomes; however, teachers enact FA in many ways. We examined classroom videos of nine experienced teachers of elementary, middle, and high school science, aiming to create a model of FA enactment that is useful to teachers. We developed a coding scheme through a validation-in-use approach to characterize teachers' practices using three streams of data that included teachers' self-interviews about the purposes and outcomes of their FAs, our analysis of their noticing/interpreting and acting, and their comments on intentions behind the teaching acts they considered significant. In contrast to cycles of eliciting-noticing-interpreting-acting, we found noticing/interpreting to be central to FA enactment, driving teachers' eliciting or advancing acts. We characterized ways of noticing/interpreting as more authoritative or dialogic and observed that eliciting acts and advancing acts occurred along a similar range. Teachers' in-the-moment purposes and larger learning goals were synthesized as they made choices about teaching acts. The model is framed in terms of utility to teachers to examine their own FA practices, with the aim of becoming better equipped to strategically enact FA in intentional ways to achieve their purposes.