Formative assessment and teaching practice: the point of view of Italian teachers

ABSTRACT

Over the years the debate on the aims, approaches, and impacts of formative assessment has never stopped to grow. Parallel to this growth is the awareness that it is crucial to understand what conceptions teachers have of assessment in order to guarantee more effective teacher education. This paper tries to connect these two fields of research: formative assessment and teacher education through an analysis of teachers’ conceptions: What do teachers think about assessment? What aims do they pursue through it? Do teachers really distinguish between formative and summative assessment? On the backdrop of the formative assessment literature, the article reports on an exploratory research study. Limitations and issues are analysed in order to shed light on teacher education implication and on future educational research paths in the educational assessment field.

KEYWORDS:

• Formative assessment
• summative assessment
• teachers’ conceptions
• teacher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Participants were allowed to tick up to three items (N = 1.053).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Serafina Pastore

Serafina Pastore Ph.D. on Instructional Design and Educational Assessment, Fulbright Research Fellow, works as a researcher at the Department of Education, Psychology, Communication, University of Bari-Italy. She also serves as the coordinator of Italian Evaluation Society’s Special Interest Group on Educational Assessment. Her research interests include the study of formative assessment, feedback practice, self-assessment, and teacher assessment literacy.

Researcher on Organizational Psychology, Department of Education, Psychology, Communication.

Amelia Manuti

Amelia Manuti Ph.D on Evaluation of educational policies. Research interests: Educational evaluation; policy evaluation

Anna Fausta Scardigno

Anna Fausta Scardigno Ph.D on Communication Psychology. Research interests: Workplace learning; work psychology.