Designing formative assessment lessons for concept development and problem solving

Swan, Malcolm

Abstract

Formative assessment is the process by which teachers and students gather evidence of learning and then use this to adapt the way they teach and learn. I describe a design research project in which we integrated formative assessment strategies into lesson materials that focus on developing students’ conceptual understanding and their capacity to tackle non-routine problems. A theoretical framework for assessment task design is presented, together with an analysis of research-based principles for formative assessment lesson design. Particular aspects are highlighted: the roles of pre-assessment, formative feedback questions and sample work for students to critique. While there are some early signs that these lessons provide an effective model for teachers to introduce formative assessment into everyday classroom practice, the materials require a radical shift in the predominant culture within most classrooms.

Citation

Swan, M. Designing formative assessment lessons for concept development and problem solving. Presented at 37th Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education

• Conference Name: 37th Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education
• End Date: Nov 8, 2015
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Mar 14, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 14, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: Assessment and Evaluation; Design Experiments
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/993179
• Publisher URL: https://www.msu.edu/~brakoni1/PMENA-2015-PROCEEDINGS-2015-11-04.pdf
• Additional Information: Published in: Bartell, T. G., Bieda, K. N., Putnam, R. T., Bradfield, K., & Dominguez, H. (Eds.). (2015). ; Proceedings of the 37th annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. East Lansing, Mich.: ; Michigan State University. ISBN 9780692540398