Abstract
Formative assessment is about strengthening student learning and can dramatically improve student achievement when it guides changes in day-to-day classroom practice. Any attempt to understand formative assessment must therefore be grounded in a notion of learning, which this paper approaches from a constructivist/experiential perspective. Importantly, for a teacher to genuinely know if a student is learning, the teacher needs to deeply question the learner so as to enter into a student’s thinking. Such deep questioning needs to be on going, not one-off single recall questions. This is not something that can be done from the front of the classroom using traditional didactic type approaches or using the initiation–response–feedback–response–feedback (IRFRF) which relates to formative practices. It requires micro-questioning skills on a developmental process, so that such on-going questioning does not degenerate into a sequence of closed interrogative recall questions. Fine-grained analysis of the dialogue used to promote high-level thinking through a questioning scaffold for facilitating formative learning is proposed.
Notes
1. The Curriculum Corporation is jointly owned by all Australian Ministers for Education.
2. As part OECD’s “What Works in Innovation” programme. The study aims to develop an understanding of a small number of exemplary innovations in the way that teaching and learning takes place and student progress is assessed as a formative process.
3. Ministerial Consultative Committee on Curriculum (MCCC). A body in Queensland set up to advise the Minister for Education on curriculum issues.
4. Longer wait time; hand’s down by students; ask open-ended ‘big questions’ or problem solving questions; use of brainstorming; a supportive climate; feedback through comments and targets; don’t award a score; provide comment on product and process; provide opportunities for students to follow up on your comments; use class time for students to re-write work; peer and self assessment; discuss assessment strategies with colleagues.
5. The Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study was a three-year project conducted by the University of Queensland on behalf of Education Queensland. Visits were made to 24 schools, 975 lessons across Years 6, 8 and 11, and lessons were coded on 20 elements. The study drew on the work of Fred Newman at the University of Wisconsin.
6. Much is written about teachers being facilitators of learning, especially if operating within a constructivist framework. However, a search of over 400 journal articles (using ProQuest) for the years 1999–2003 failed to find any articles that specifically listed these facilitating skills. The skills and processes of facilitation are assumed to be known.