Education Commons^™

Microscope Investigations: An Inquiry-Based Cell Lab, Joshua Whittaker, R. Whitlow

Inclusive Strategies for Teaching Secondary Mathematics and Science

This lesson is a collaborative effort between a student teacher and a cooperating senior teacher to design and implement an engaging and exploratory microscope lab for 7th-grade students. The goal of this lesson is to cultivate excitement, interest, and exploration in students who are new to using microscopes, aligning with the Virginia 7th Grade Life Science Standards of Learning on cells and cell theory. This lab incorporates two microscope stations—one focusing on fundamental skills and the other on inquiry-based exploration. By employing the 5E model of instruction, this paper details how students progress through engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation …

Formative Assessment And Technology In The Mathematics Classroom, Albert Humes

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

This literature review investigates the use of formative assessment and technology in the classroom. There has been research to show that mathematics proficiency has dropped recently in the United States and researchers are looking to identify new strategies for student growth. Utilizing formative assessments, as well as targeted, immediate feedback for students, can help to improve student learning. As educational technology becomes more prevalent, more studies and research are focused around its effectiveness toward student achievement. The research found that formative assessment strategies, coupled with new technologies, can positively impact student achievement.

Formative Assessment: What We Don't Learn From "Just Answers", Shelby K. Cole

Colorado Mathematics Teacher

High stakes summative assessments include questions that are proxies of expectations outlined in standards as evidence of students’ proficiency in mathematics. While these proxies can provide valuable snapshots of student learning, this does not always neatly translate to classrooms in support of formative assessment.

Formative Assessments: You Have Options, Shelly Ray Parsons

Colorado Mathematics Teacher

Formative assessment provides powerful opportunities to enhance and improve classroom experiences. Educators have the ability to empower students every day in the classroom through active learning opportunities using formative assessment strategies.

How Students Communicate Knowledge: Written Versus Drawn Responses To Formative Assessment Questions In An Introductory Undergraduate Marine Science Course, Christina Siddons

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Undergraduate science education suffers from a lack of concrete instructional strategies that address real-world postgraduate skills such as visual literacy and science communication. Research within marine science education especially lags behind other, more well-researched fields such as physics or mathematics education, both of which have extensive literature addressing specific instructional strategies that instructors can implement in the classroom. Undergraduate marine science programs overlap with content areas from chemistry, physics, and biology, and provide a rich opportunity for examining how to include more authentic educational experiences in an undergraduate classroom. However, the types of assessments that are typically employed tend to …

Middle-School Mathematics Teachers' Use Of Formative Assessment Data, Shawana T. Green

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A school district located in the southeastern United States uses benchmark tests as formative assessment to provide teachers with data to differentiate their instruction to meet the individual needs of students in their classrooms. Despite this effort, student achievement in mathematics in this school district has not improved. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of how middle-grade mathematics teachers used the benchmark results as formative data to guide instruction and meet student needs. The conceptual framework that grounded this study was the model of formative assessment developed by Black and Wiliam. For this basic qualitative study, …

Formative Assessment As A Method To Improve Student Performance In The Sciences, Natalie Miller

Honors Projects

This study focused on utilizing formative assessment to shape student understanding and teaching practices in a junior high science classroom. Students were given a pre-test as a method of formative assessment and their results on the pre-assessment before instruction were compared to their performance on a modified post-test. Students received direct instruction, completed an independent project, and responded to daily “bellringer” questions as a form of additional formative assessment before taking the post-test. Students showed marked improvement on the post-test as average scores increased from a 35.7 percent to a 94.4 percent.

Student And Teacher Response To Formative Assessment Feedback In Eighth-Grade Mathematics: A Design Experiment, Desiree Dawn Rones

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Formative assessment is a tool for learning that virtually every educator uses in the classroom to some extent. While teachers may be motivated to use formative assessment for a variety of reasons, its intended purpose is to be a tool for both teachers and students for teaching and learning, respectively. However, many teachers, even those with the best intentions, misunderstand and misuse formative assessment, and may cause more harm than good in the way that it is implemented in the classroom. Three critical factors for student success in learning are mindset, goal orientation, and autonomy. Research has shown that students …

Using Student And Teacher Thinking To Improve Teaching And Learning, Ken Jensen

Teaching and Learning Sciences: Doctoral Research Projects

This research project examined how a teacher and an instructional coach can use formative assessment data on student thinking to improve the teaching and learning in a mathematics classroom. Two research questions guided the project and from them three instructional strategies emerged. The first strategy was the use of formative assessment data collected on student thinking from a previous lesson to plan for the learning in future lessons. The second strategy was the use of formative assessment data collected on student thinking during a lesson to make decisions about how to proceed with the lesson. The third strategy was the …

Perceptions Of Mathematics Teachers Regarding Common Core State Standards And Formative Assessment, Julie Gale Mest

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The adoption of the Common Core State Standards has necessitated a change in the instructional practices used by many mathematics teachers. The new standards encourage problem solving and the development of conceptual understanding rather than rote memorization of formulas and rules. Researchers have demonstrated that formative assessment is a powerful instructional tool that, when implemented properly, can increase student achievement. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine how mathematics teachers in Pennsylvania perceive the new standards; how they value and use formative assessment practices including involving students in their work, modeling quality work, providing feedback, and providing opportunities …

Using Pre-Assessments To Make Decisions About Differentiation In A Detracked High School Biology Classroom, Michelina Macdonald

Journal of Practitioner Research

This article describes how one teacher used practitioner research to study the role that pre-assessment played when making decisions about student grouping and differentiated instruction within a detracked, honors biology classroom. Much detail is provided in this article describing the study design around a unit on protein synthesis and the steps taken in data analyses to contextualize this study within a practitioner research methodology. The teacher discusses her findings using a claim, evidence, and reasoning framework common in scientific inquiry to illustrate the effectiveness of using pre-assessment to group students for tiered instruction.

Formative Assessment To Support Students’ Competences In Inquiry-Based Science Education, Regula Grob, Monika Holmeier, Peter Labudde

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

Inquiry-based education has been part of innovative science teaching for the last few decades. With the competence orientation now underlying many national curricula, one of the emerging questions is how the development of student competences can be fostered in the context of inquiry-based science education. One approach to supporting students in their learning is formative assessment, which is, however, not frequently used in a structured way in daily teaching practice. The aim of this study therefore is to explore what kinds of measures might support science teachers in implementing formative assessment activities in their inquiry-based education. For this, firstly, we …

Addressing The Stem Challenge Through Targeted Teaching : What’S The Evidence?, Dianne Siemon

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Numerous public reports are pointing to the critical importance of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) to Australia’s future, but the number of students studying STEM subjects in senior years is declining, and many students in the primary and middle years of schooling do not have access to the ways of thinking and learning needed to succeed in school mathematics. Research over the past 10 years has established the critical role of multiplicative thinking in building student knowledge and confidence at this level of schooling, but there is a need for an expanded, evidence-based learning and teaching framework to support …

Do Formative Assessment Strategies Help Learners With Academic Difficulties?, Dana King

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not formative assessment strategies enhance the educational learning experience for lower level learners in a mathematics classroom setting. The selected students are supported by a Basic Skills teacher and perform below grade level. The FA group, Formative Assessment group, was given two variations of Formative Assessments to use each day. The IAL group, Instruction as Usual group, continued as is. The formative assessment strategies used were mini white boards and a mathematical graphic organizer allowing the students to determine the problem, question being asked, information provided, which operation to choose, …

Integrating Formative Assessment Into Physics Instruction: The Effect Of Formative Vs. Summative Assessment On Student Physics Learning And Attitudes, Chaiphat Plybour

Dissertations

Of many instructional strategies used to improve teaching and learning in science, formative assessment is potentially one of the most effective. A central feature is timely feedback during learning, giving students the opportunity to benefit and improve while also enabling teachers to adjust instruction to learner needs. By contrast, conventional assessment tends to be mostly summative, assigning point scores, grading and ranking students, and providing extrinsic motivation. For maximum effectiveness in enhancing learning, formative assessment should be designed into instruction from the start rather than being an add-on. This project comprised development, teaching, and research aspects. Two physics topic modules, …

Evaluating The Use Of The Math Reasoning Inventory For Improvement In Fraction Instruction, Kathy Huffman Boyer

Dissertations

In an attempt to close the mathematic achievement gap between students from the United States and students from other countries, a new national set of standards, the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, was developed and adopted by the state of Michigan in 2010. These standards emphasize mathematical reasoning and application, rather than the previous emphasis on performing calculations. Unfortunately, teachers generally have had little training in how to assess students’ mathematical reasoning, how to teach mathematical reasoning, or how to provide remediation to those students who show need. The purpose of this study was to see if use of …

Using Case Method To Explicitly Teach Formative Assessment In Preservice Teacher Science Education, Amy Elizabeth Bentz

Dissertations

The process of formative assessment improves student understanding; however, the topic of formative assessment in preservice education has been severely neglected. Since a major goal of teacher education is to create reflective teaching professionals, preservice teachers should be provided an opportunity to critically reflect on the use of formative assessment in the classroom. Case method is an instructional methodology that allows learners to engage in and reflect on real-world situations. Case based pedagogy can play an important role in enhancing preservice teachers’ ability to reflect on teaching and learning by encouraging alternative ways of thinking about assessment.

Although the literature …

Pedagogy Of Science Teaching Tests: Formative Assessments Of Science Teaching Orientations, William W. Cobern, David Schuster, Betty Adams, Brandy Ann Skjold, Ebru Zeynep Mugaloglu, Amy Bentz, Kelly Sparks

Scientific Literacy and Cultural Studies Project

A critical aspect of teacher education is gaining pedagogical content knowledge of how to teach science for conceptual understanding. Given the time limitations of college methods courses, it is difficult to touch on more than a fraction of the science topics potentially taught across grades K-8, particularly in the context of relevant pedagogies. This research and development work centers on constructing a formative assessment resource to help expose pre-service teachers to a greater number of science topics within teaching episodes using various modes of instruction. To this end, 100 problem-based, science pedagogy assessment items were developed via expert group discussions …

Students' Perceived Utility Of Precision Taught Calculus, Rebecca-Anne Dibbs, David Glassmeyer, Wafa Yacoub

Faculty and Research Publications

The last decade of calculus research has showed students learn best when lecture is supplemented with thoughtful use of technology and group work; however, educators are given little direction of how they are to balance the already full first semester calculus class. Precision teaching is an instructional model that employs formative assessment to provide information on what topics are understood by students as well as indicate troublesome concepts. With this information, the instructor can adjust class time accordingly by incorporating supplemental activities most beneficial to students. The purpose of this interview study was to explore the perceived utility of precision …

A Data Generating Review That Bops, Twists And Pulls At Misconceptions, Kimberly Gardner

Faculty and Research Publications

Statistics is an integral part of the K-12 mathematics curriculum (age 5-18). Naturally, students construct misconceptions of what they learn. This article discusses The Bop It^© Challenge, a review activity assesses student understanding and reveals their misundertandings of statistical concepts.

Formative Assessment: Benefit For All, William Wallace

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated how formative assessment implemented in a fifth grade mathematics classroom with a student response system and a student self-evaluative tool affected student self-assessment. Data were collected through individual student and focus group interviews, self-assessment sheets, and teacher reflections. Formative assessment is a low stakes classroom assessment that is an assessment for learning. This study used a student response system to convey feedback from the formative assessment to both students and teacher during instruction. The student self-assessment sheet was implemented to provide a more dynamic level of feedback for students than what could be provided through the student …

Probing Space: Formative Assessment In A Middle School Inquiry-Based Science Classroom, Clinton W. Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This action research thesis was performed to explore the research questions: How did the use of formative assessment affect student performance data in understanding the concepts of the Sun-Earth-Moon system?, How did the use of learning scales as formative techniques impact student self-assessment of their knowledge of the Sun-Earth-Moon system?, How did the implementation of formative assessment techniques affect student discourse on the topic of the Sun-Earth-Moon system? Formative assessment techniques including "talk-friendly" probes, sticky bars, and agree-disagree statements were used in the classroom to expose gaps in knowledge, to facilitate discourse, and promote self-assessment. A triangulation of data included …

Professional Development: A Case Study Of Mrs. G, Sharilyn Kay Owens

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a case study of one teacher who participated in a project that investigated the effects of the Texas Instruments NavigatorTM, a wireless communication system on student algebra achievement and related pedagogy. The larger study, Classroom Connectivity in Promoting Mathematics and Science Achievement (CCMS) based at The Ohio State University (OSU), funded by the U. S. Department of Education, involved approximately 120 self-selected participants across the United States. A partial requirement for participation was agreement to attend professional development provided by the CCMS project. The professional development included a week-long summer institute at OSU prior to implementation of …

General Education Course In Intuitive Quantum Physics, Michael C. Wittmann

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This project improves student conceptual and epistemological knowledge in the sciences while developing a template for formative assessment in a general education course at the University of Maine. A general education course in Intuitive Quantum Physics is being created in which non-science students learn quantum physics through simple observations, basic logical reasoning, and graphical analysis. Materials from three proven curricula are being adapted to include explicit discussions of epistemological issues. The three curricula (developed in part with NSF funding) that are being adapted to create the Intuitive Quantum Physics course include Activity-Based Tutorials in wave mechanics, New Model Course in …