An argument for formative assessment with science learning progressions

ABSTRACT

Learning progressions—particularly as defined and operationalized in science education—have significant potential to inform teachers’ formative assessment practices. In this overview article, I lay out an argument for this potential, starting from definitions for “formative assessment practices” and “learning progressions” (both in science education and more subject-general literature). By aligning the challenges that teachers face in enacting formative assessment practices with the affordances of learning progressions, I explain how learning progressions may support these practices. Finally, I preview how the articles in the special issue address this hypothesis.

Funding

Preparation of this article was supported in part by a grant from the US National Science Foundation (Grant No. DRL-1253036).

Acknowledgment

I am deeply grateful to Lorrie Shepard for her collegial dialogue about the ideas in this article.

Notes

¹ Although most efforts to use learning progressions to inform formative assessment have focused on teachers, future research might explore how learning progressions could inform students’ formative assessment practices.

² The distinction between these two conceptualizations can be seen further in recommendations for the construction of learning progressions. In general approaches, learning progressions are constructed either by content experts, based on their expertise in the domain—in particular, “what constitutes the ‘big ideas’ of the domain and how they connect together”—or by “curriculum content experts and teachers … based on their experience of teaching children” (Heritage, 2008, p. 12). In contrast, recommendations for science learning progressions state that such learning progressions are “based on research about how students’ learning actually progresses—as opposed to selecting sequences of topics and learning experiences based only on logical analysis of current disciplinary knowledge and on personal experiences in teaching” (Corcoran et al., 2009, p. 8) and, thus, explicitly reject the methods used in general approaches to learning progressions.

³ In contrast, writing in the general literature, Heritage (2007) indicates that only domain knowledge (and not PCK) is required to define a learning progression.

Additional information

Funding

Preparation of this article was supported in part by a grant from the US National Science Foundation (Grant No. DRL-1253036).