Elementary Teachers' Use of Formative Assessment to Support Students' Learning About Interactions Between the Hydrosphere and Geosphere

ABSTRACT

Students' thinking should serve as the foundation of effective science curriculum and instruction. To promote science learning, particularly in the geosciences, teachers must attend to students' existing ideas about natural phenomena through the use of “high-leverage” instructional practices such as formative assessment. Elementary teachers need support to learn to implement formative assessment practices effectively. However, few studies have explored relationships between elementary teachers' content knowledge and formative assessment practices, analysis of students' thinking, and instructional decision making. To begin to address this gap in the literature, we conducted a convergent parallel mixed methods study to examine how elementary teachers employ formative assessment practices to scaffold elementary students' learning about interactions between water and the geosphere, which is a core, unifying concept in the Earth sciences. This research is embedded within a multiyear professional development program designed to support elementary teachers (grades 3–5) to learn to employ formative assessment in their classrooms. Study findings show teachers' own knowledge of geoscience disciplinary content is unrelated to their formative assessment practices. They also highlight the importance of the elementary science curriculum materials teachers use in framing disciplinary concepts in ways that influence how teachers evaluate student artifacts and engage in follow-up instruction based.

Key words::

• geoscience
• elementary science
• formative assessment
• elementary teachers

Acknowledgments

Cory Forbes and Jaime Sabel are shared first authors and appear in alphabetical order. Mandy Biggers is second author. This work is funded by the Spencer Foundation, the Iowa Board of Regents, and the Title IIA Improving Teacher Quality: State Grants Program. However, any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors. We appreciate the interest and cooperation of Leslie Flynn, Christopher Soldat, Jeanne Bancroft, Kathy Long, Madison Fontana, and the elementary teachers who made this research possible. We also thank Laura Zangori, Tina Vo, and anonymous reviewers for their help in thinking about these issues and their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this paper.