How do Expert and Novice Teachers Monitor and Enhance Student Understanding? Qualitative Comparisons Informing the Design of a Digital Formative Assessment Platform

Abstract

Digital formative assessment tools have been identified as a promising support for mathematics teachers’ practices of monitoring and enhancing students’ understanding. However, more research is required to align these support affordances better with teachers’ practices. In a qualitative expert-novice comparison, we investigated how expert and novice teachers use diagnostic information (about fifth graders’ understanding of multiplication and division) for their practices of monitoring, personalized goal setting, and enhancing student understanding. From the identified differences in aligning these practices to each other, we derive design implications for five different analytic reports in the digital formative assessment platform, not only correctness overviews and detailed error-focused reports and, but also three kinds of aggregated dashboards, here called individual-focused, task-focused, and learning trajectory-integrating dashboards that support different aspects of the goal-setting, monitoring, and enhancing practices.