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Characterizing middle school science teachers’ informal formative assessment strategies and their effects on student

inquiry skills Joseph A. Brobst & Eric M. EslingerSchool of Education, University of

Delaware

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Formative assessment – assessment for learning / during the learning process– Informal formative assessment (IFA) – “on the fly” formative

assessment during classroom conversations

Student self-regulation / self-assessment– Influenced by & connected to feedback / informal formative

assessment– Metacognitive by nature

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Introduction

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RQ: What types of informal formative assessment are used by middle school science teachers during a computer-based inquiry intervention, and how does this IFA influence development of student inquiry skills?

RH: Some of the IFA used will be metacognitive in nature; students often engaged in this type of IFA will show gains in understanding of scientific inquiry.

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Research Question & Hypothesis

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University-affiliated laboratory school for students with identified learning disabilities– Two classroom teachers, one reading specialist– 12 students per classroom– “grades” 5-6; 7-8– Students worked in pairs on laptop computers– Genetics curriculum incorporated into Inquiry

Island software program

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Study Context / Participants

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Inquiry Island

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Ubiquitous Data Collection– Webcam video captured via Inquiry Island– Two class weeks of video analyzed (approx 32

hours)– Transcribed all assessment interactions

Inquiry Skills Measurement– The Inquiry Test

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Data Sources

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Mechanical“Might want to put a period in there.”

Procedural“These actually go in the evaluate section. You might want to

move that stuff.”Content

“What was different about this dark green cross compared to the first one?”

Metacognitive“How do you know?”; “Isn’t that a better question?”

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Informal Formative Assessment Types Identified

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“Ms. Green’s” classroom– Significantly more IFA interactions identified vs.

other teacher (n = 91 versus n = 69)– More IFA interactions were metacognitive in

nature – Number of students with highest individual

Inquiry Test gain scores

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Case Study Selection

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Purposes of Metacognitive Informal Formative Assessment– Prompting student assessment of existing science

content knowledge– Prompting student assessment of own

experimental designs– Accessing students’ nascent knowledge of science

content & scientific inquiry

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Findings from Case Analysis

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Ms. Green: Well, what about, maybe the color of your eyes is luck and you just got lucky and had the same one that your mom and dad have.

Lisa: No, no. Ms. Green: How do you know that?

Lisa: Because, they, when, you usually look like your parents 'cause of like genes or...like DNA...

Ms. Green: Well how do you know eye color is a gene, DNA?Lisa: I don't know! But I just, I know!

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Prompting student assessment of existing content knowledge

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Ms. Green: But back to my question. Can you take the patterns you see here; do you think this is going to be the same for the whole world? Did you test enough...

Lisa: No, not exactly, but... Ms. Green: Did you test enough people to be able to say your

patterns are going to be the same for the whole world? Lisa: No, we only tested two. If we could get the

whole class, then maybe we'd get a little more.

Ms. Green: So how, how would you rate your sample then? Lisa: Ehh, I really think we did the best we could

do. Ms. Green: Right, you did what I asked you to do.

Lisa: Yeah, very limited.

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Prompting student assessment of experimental designs

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Ms. Green: So what did you get? What answers did you not expect?

Lisa: Um...Ms. Green: Talk about it first, don't type it.

Lisa: When we had dark green plus dark green we got, um, light, we got two light greens and when we did dark green plus light green...when we did dark green…

Ms. Green: So get all of the things that you learned now into that screen. OK. You should've learned so much that you could fill it up a whole bunch of times if you wanted to.

Lisa: I think we're done.Ms. Green: OK. You read over it and make sure that you didn't

learn anything else in these experiments. OK, 'cause I think you probably learned more than is written.

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Accessing students’ nascent knowledge

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1 Ms. Green: OK, I know you know a lot. But tell me what you know. 2 Eddie: Yeah.

3 Ms. Green: I'm not that little man living inside your head talking to you all the time. Am I?4 Phillip: I wish you were, at points. 5 Ms. Green: Yeah, so you didn't have to do your work, right?6 Phillip: [laughs]

7 Ms. Green: So delete that, and put down what you know. Hang on a second - take turns. Phillip, when you're writing something you know, say it out loud and let Eddie type it so that you can think about your thoughts and not the typing part. And then Eddie, when you're thinking you can let Phillip type for you.

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Explicit Scaffolding of Student Metacognition

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Reading Specialist (“Ms. Oliver”)– Focused efforts on Mechanical IFA

– Presence “freed” classroom teacher “Ms. Green” to:

• Engage in more instances of IFA than other teacher• Focus more on IFA types besides mechanical (including

metacognitive)

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Additional Finding: Role of Support Personnel in Informal Formative Assessment

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Future Work– Investigate informal formative assessment

interactions in traditional classroom context

– Identify factors that lead to teacher use of metacognitive IFA & explicit, non-evaluative metacognitive scaffolding

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Acknowledgments– NARST– University of Delaware School of Education– Teachers, staff, & students of TCS– For their help & insight regarding this presentation & the

accompanying paper: Eric Eslinger, Nicole DiGironimo, Bridget Brennan

Paper available at: http://udel.edu/~joebro/narst2009.pdf

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Questions?