John Pryor

Developing Formative Assessment in the Classroom: Using Action Research To Explore and Modify Theory.

This article reports the outcomes of a research project designed to investigate and develop formative classroom assessment in primary schools. The project was a collaborative one, involving two university-based researchers and a team of teacher-researchers. The aims were to build on basic research already carried out by the university researchers by investigating the issues from a more practical and applied perspective; consider how a collaborative action research approach to the professional development of teachers might be used to bring about changes in classroom assessment practices; and provide a basis for the further development and refinement of theory on formative assessment. The article reports on changes in classroom practice, particularly involving the clarification and communication of assessment criteria to pupils, and on the processes by which this came about.

A socio‐cultural theorisation of formative assessment

Formative assessment has attracted increasing attention from both practitioners and scholars over the last decade. This paper draws on the authors’ empirical research conducted over eleven years in educational situations ranging from infant schools to postgraduate education to propose a theorisation of formative assessment. Formative assessment is seen as taking place when teachers and learners seek to respond to student work, making judgements about what is good learning with a view to improving that learning. However, the theorisation emphasises formative assessment as being a discursive social practice, involving dialectical, sometimes conflictual, processes. These bring into play issues of power in which learners’ and teachers’ identities are implicated and what counts as legitimate knowledge is framed by institutional discourses and summative assessment demands. The paper argues that, rather than only paying attention to the content of learning, an ambition for formative assessment might be to deconstruct these contextual issues, allowing a critical consideration of learning as a wider process of becoming. The article suggests a model that might be useful to teachers and learners in achieving this.

A vision of successful schooling: Ghanaian teachers’ understandings of learning, teaching and assessment

This article reports on an empirical study exploring Ghanaian teachers’ understandings of teaching, learning and assessment. It argues that received views of poorly trained teachers with untheorized and badly reasoned professional practices may mask a more complex situation. In defining learning, teachers in the study reproduced models consistent with transmission or behaviouristic theories. However, when asked to describe their most successful experiences, teachers’ understandings were more in accord with social constructivism. Also, their aspiration towards interactive models of classroom assessment was circumscribed by the normal context of assessment discourse and by bureaucratic requirements. The article concludes that, given the right circumstances, teachers can reflect on their experiences and produce a more sophisticated account of teaching and learning. It suggests ways in which in‐service work might make use of these insights, recommending further attention to the discursive frames of teachers’ professional reflections within dialogue and active engagement through school‐based coaching.

Challenging Formative Assessment: Disciplinary Spaces and Identities.

What if knowledge is a form of doing, an engagement between a knowing subject and what is known? What if learning is a contextualised performance involving students engaging with prospective and current social identities, and therefore an ontological as well as an epistemological accomplishment? What then becomes of formative assessment within different disciplinary pedagogies? In this paper, we open up the possibility of formative assessment as encompassing a disciplinary meta‐discourse within the context of teaching as response. We draw on data from a postgraduate context to illustrate how the identities of teachers and learners may be brought into play. Formative assessment is seen to involve movement across a concrete–procedural–reflective–discursive–existential continuum, and between the convergent and divergent. We suggest that by asserting the centrality of disciplinary knowledge and identities, the frameworks presented may be used heuristically to entice academics into thinking more specifically and organically about pedagogies which are more appropriate to the changing nature of twenty‐first‐century higher education.

Can community participation mobilise social capital for improvement of rural schooling? A case study from Ghana

This article uses a case study of rural education in Ghana to investigate an important element of the decentralisation agenda – community participation in schooling. Drawing on a theoretical framework derived from Bourdieu, it argues that schooling and community life are two distinct and differently structured fields. The research demonstrates how this acts as a severe constraint on attempts to mobilise community social capital for the improvement of the school. The position is further complicated by specific postcolonial socio‐cultural conditions and a view of community that does not correspond with peoples experience. The article concludes by arguing that if community participation is desirable in itself, then the state, through the school, should be active in trying to create it, rather than looking to the community to develop the school.

Using Email for Formative Assessment with Professional Doctorate Students

This article reports on aspects of a recent research and development project in doctoral education. It focuses on the use of email for tutor’s formative assessment within the early stages of a Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD) in an English university. Its case study methodology included participant observation of the programme workshops, critical discourse analysis of the email texts, and two series of in‐depth, semi‐structured student interviews. The tutor whose feedback was analysed had previously researched and theorised formative assessment, so the research allowed his previous theoretical insights to be explored and developed in an early doctoral context. The article concludes by discussing the problematic power of feedback at this level, given the culturally constructed associations of feedback with summative assessment, and implications for supervisory practice.

Becoming researchers: a sociocultural perspective on assessment, learning and the construction of identity in a professional doctorate

The article reports on a small‐scale in‐depth research study investigating formative assessment enacted and theorised from a sociocultural perspective within a part‐time Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD) programme in an English university. Going beyond its conventional conceptualisation within psychological and motivational frameworks, formative assessment here encouraged students to view their learning as entailing the development of identities as researchers. The research adopted a case study approach, drawing upon participant observation, discourse analysis of online discussion forum and email feedback, and two series of student interviews. Although the practice of formative assessment remains problematic, students’ responses suggest the value of tutor feedback, including its ontological dimension. Given the wide‐ranging backgrounds of the learners who participated in this study, our findings suggest the relevance of a sociocultural view of formative assessment for supporting a more diverse doctoral student population. This leads us to argue for doctoral supervision to be conceptualised more firmly as a pedagogic relation in which formative assessment has a key role.

Action research in West African schools: problems and prospects

Abstract This paper investigates the claims of action research as an appropriate research methodology for investigating West African education. It suggests that since action research is sensitive to context and is directly relevant to practitioners, it might avoid some of the criticisms that have been levelled at some other methodologies. However, data from Ghana are used to problematize this position. The paper concludes with a discussion of ways in which collaboration between academics and teachers, based on action research, might develop so that both useful knowledge about education in West Africa is derived and practice is improved.

Teacher-pupil interaction in formative assessment: Assessing the work or protecting the child?

Many claims are currently being made about the formative role that assessment can and should play in teaching and learning. Such claims derive from a variety of arguments but focus on questions of how children learn and how they can benefit from supportive questioning and constructive feedback. However, we have little empirical evidence with which to evaluate such claims. In particular we have few descriptions or analyses of the sorts of teacher-pupil interaction which would constitute such formative assessment.

Investigating Teacher Assessment in Infant Classrooms: methodological problems and emerging issues

ABSTRACT The paper outlines the development of teacher assessment and the role of formative assessment in National Curriculum Assessment in England and Wales. Theories of and evidence for formative assessment are briefly reviewed in order to provide a context for the research reported. The paper then presents work in progress from an ESRC‐funded study of Teacher Assessment at Key Stage 1. Using insights gained from classroom interaction studies, the project is investigating both the process of assessment and the purposes to which it is put. The paper uses the description of an incident from initial fieldwork to raise issues of methodology and substance.