Teacher inquiry into formative assessment practices in remedial reading classrooms

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Teacher inquiry into formativeassessment practices in remedialreading classroomsSusan M. Brookhart a , Connie M. Moss a & Beverly A. Long ba School of Education, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USAb Armstrong School District, Ford City, PA, USAPublished online: 04 Feb 2010.

To cite this article: Susan M. Brookhart , Connie M. Moss & Beverly A. Long (2010) Teacher inquiryinto formative assessment practices in remedial reading classrooms, Assessment in Education:Principles, Policy & Practice, 17:1, 41-58, DOI: 10.1080/09695940903565545

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Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & PracticeVol. 17, No. 1, February 2010, 41–58

ISSN 0969-594X print/ISSN 1465-329X online© 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/09695940903565545http://www.informaworld.com

Teacher inquiry into formative assessment practices in remedial reading classrooms

Susan M. Brookharta*, Connie M. Mossa and Beverly A. Longb

aSchool of Education, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; bArmstrong School District, Ford City, PA, USATaylor and FrancisCAIE_A_457030.sgm10.1080/09695940903565545Assessment in Education0969-594X (print)/1465-329X (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis171000000February [email protected]

Six remedial reading teachers in a large, rural school district participated in a formof professional development called Teaching as Intentional Learning, based on aninquiry process. Their topic of inquiry was formative assessment. Professionaldevelopment comprised both direct instruction and inquiry learning in teachers’own classrooms. This study describes the strategies they experimented with, theirprofessional growth in formative assessment, and effects on students. All sixteachers showed important professional growth, as indicated by their ownreflections and also by their supervisor’s observations. In First Grade, at-riskstudents assigned to these project teachers had increased reading readiness scoreson one measure (DIBELS PSF) compared with at-risk students assigned to non-project teachers.

Formative classroom assessment is assessment conducted during instruction in orderto give teachers and students a clear idea of how students’ performance levelscompare with the learning target (learning goals or objectives), and how they mightclose the gap between their current level of understanding and the target. Researchsuggests that when students experience formative assessment that emphasises thefollowing methods, they learn more (Black and Wiliam 1998; Newman, Bryk andNagaoka 2001; Meisels et al. 2003; Rodriguez 2004) and develop a more mastery-oriented approach to learning (Ames and Archer 1988; Meece and Miller 1999):

● Communicating clear learning targets to students;● Interpreting student work, behaviour, and discourse for what it says about their

achievement; and● Providing clear descriptive feedback tied to learning targets, student needs, and

suggestions for next steps.

Feedback is the linchpin that connects this process. Effective feedback describesstudent work against clear criteria and focuses students on specific strategies forimprovement. Effective feedback is focused at an appropriate level of abstraction (whichwill differ with the task and the child); and involves the student in self-assessment,especially as a catalyst for self-regulation (Bangert-Drowns et al. 1991; Butler andWinne 1995; Kluger and DeNisi 1996; Hattie and Timperley 2007).

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

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42 S.M. Brookhart et al.

Despite the conclusions listed above, much remains to be known. Creating a goodformative learning environment is not a simple matter. There are only a few descrip-tions of specific formative assessment practices in specific subjects (Tunstall andGipps 1996; Torrance and Pryor 1998, 2001; Wiliam et al. 2004; James et al. 2006).

The purpose of the study was to answer these research questions:

(1) What do remedial reading teachers learn when they participate in teacherinquiry into their own formative assessment practices?

(2) What, if any, new or modified assessment practices do they devise, includingboth (a) methods to elicit information from students; and (b) methods toprovide feedback to students.

(3) What are the results for student learning?

Teacher inquiry as professional development

In the United States, the concept of teachers conducting research in their own class-rooms, on their own practice, dates from at least half a century ago (Corey 1953). It isstill being hailed as an excellent way to foster the professional growth of individualteachers and the culture of a learning community (Hubbard and Power 1993; Calhoun2002; Levin and Rock 2003). Its high view of teachers and of the learning and growthpotential of an inquiry approach (Henson 1996) fits well with the professional devel-opment school movement (Levin and Rock 2003) and with current interest in thepower of professional learning communities (McLaughlin and Talbert 2006). Itsactive and inductive nature allows for addressing changes in both teacher beliefs andpractices (Schreiber and Moss 2002).

Henson (1996) pointed out that more data on the effects of teacher inquiry in theirown classrooms have been collected about perceptions than about anything else.Specifically, teachers who participated in action research have reported perceiving:improvements in practice, desire to stay current in the field, reduced burnout, open-ness to learning in general, and a more critical and questioning approach to their work(VanDeWeghe 1992; Henson 1996).

Teacher inquiry can be a way to promote school reform (Henson 1996). In thewords of Calhoun (2002, 18):

Action research can change the social system in schools and other education organiza-tions so that continual formal learning is both expected and supported. It can replacesuperficial coverage with depth of knowledge. And it can generate data to measure theeffects of various programs and methods on student and staff learning.

The professional development potential of action research also extends to the internshipsetting (Levin and Rock 2003). In Levin and Rock’s study, four of five collaborativeteacher mentor/mentee pairs provided opportunities for intentional, focused discussionabout teaching and learning. The fifth, less successful, pair, served to demonstrate thatclear communication and a commitment to professional dialogue are important prereq-uisites for successful action research and for professional mentoring.

Formative assessment in early literacy

Formative assessment in early literacy depends on the assumptions educators holdabout assessing literacy in young children as well as what it means to become literate

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Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice 43

(Murphy 2003). The assessments early literacy teachers use do not always align withtheir espoused conceptions of early literacy (Bailey and Drummond 2006), so thequality of early literacy formative assessment may be in question. Teachers’ concep-tions are influenced by the competing perspectives of literacy assessment thatcontinue to ebb and flow in the literature and the classroom.

For most of the twentieth century a ‘reading readiness’ perspective held sway(e.g., Seefeldt 1980; Stallman and Pearson 1990) and continues to influence manyclassroom teachers who conceive reading readiness as a function of intelligence thatdevelops as children grow and who believe children’s minds must reach a certainlevel of maturity before they are able to learn to read (Gessel 1925). Even as theyincorporate formative assessment, they continue to believe literacy assessment shoulddetermine when children are ready to read so literacy instruction can begin andfailure can be minimised.

The ‘new literacy’ movement of the mid 1960s contained many formative assess-ment characteristics (e.g., Clay 1972; Rosen and Rosen 1973; Holdaway, 1979;Goodman and Goodman 1980; Ferreiro and Teberosky 1982; Meek 1982; Sulzby1986; Grossi 1990; Pontecorvo and Zucchermaglio 1990; Willinsky 1990) andargued that how we assess early literacy masks as much information as it uncovers.The new literacy movement encourages teachers to use a variety of assessments tocollect multiple sources of information, including observing children in authenticliteracy contexts (Isaacs 1966).

Recently renewed interest in large-scale standardised tests to assess early literacy(Murphy 1997, 2001; Murphy et al. 1998; Sacks 1999; Hoffman et al. 2001; Johnstonand Rogers 2001; DfES 2002), has garnered criticism from the American EducationalResearch Association (2000) and the International Reading Association (1999). Alongwith the standardised test movement – and some would argue because of it – calls forformative perspectives on assessing literacy are growing. Rogoff, Goodman-Turkanisand Bartlett (2001), for example, argue for multiple assessments to gauge children’sprogress in the interrelated processes they use when learning to read, rather thansimply focusing on certifying children’s reading achievement. Using the language of‘balanced literacy’ and ‘multiple literacies’ (Gipps 1999; Cowen 2003; Hoffman et al.2003; Pearson 2004; Reutzel and Cooter 2004; Johnston and Costello 2005;Afflerbach 2007) researchers make the case that simultaneously employing a varietyof assessments is the only sure means to understand where children are in their learn-ing and how best to inform their progress. Today, there is strong agreement thatformative assessments of early literacy using ‘moment-to-moment, day-to-day obser-vations of children as they talk, read, and write in the classroom’ (Barone, Malletteand Xu 2005, 7) should form the basis for classroom decisions about literacy learning.

The early literacy context for this study

In the United States, Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 provides fundingfor services for at-risk students. Because of federal funding, Kindergarten students atrisk of failure in reading in the school district in this study were able to attendExtended Day Kindergarten (EDK), with full- instead of half-day classes. First Gradestudents at risk of failure in reading were served by remedial reading teachers inaddition to their regular classroom teacher.

This study involved remedial reading teachers in investigating their own formativeassessment practices. It built on professional development work in reading that the

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university and school district had conducted in 2004–2005. The reason for selectingreading for emphasis that year was that achievement on the state reading assessmentwas low. With professional development reading achievement did, in fact, rise in 2005in the district. Therefore, the remedial reading teachers who participated in this studyhad already had opportunities to strengthen their knowledge of reading development.

Two of this study’s authors were university-based and the third was the Coordinatorof Federal Programs in the district. All three participated in delivering the professionaldevelopment and studying its effects. Therefore, the authors were in essence doing theirown inquiry into practice, with the results described here.

In this district, remedial reading teachers must have a certification beyond elemen-tary education (e.g., Reading Specialist, Masters in Literacy). Students in either feder-ally funded programme (extended-day Kindergarten or reading support in the primarygrades) have been identified as achieving below the expected reading standard fortheir grade level. All early literacy support teachers followed the same core curriculumand administered the same benchmark assessments at the same intervals. The districtused a ‘scripted’ curriculum in both Kindergarten (The Letter People; http://www.abramsandcompany.com/letterpeople_index.cfm) and First Grade (Read Well;www.readwell.net) to ensure the presentation of concepts at a specific pace andsequence.

Method

Participants

The federally funded Coordinator of Federal Programs (the third author) for a largerural school district in a mid-Atlantic US state selected six remedial reading teachersto participate in this study. Two of the teachers provided an additional half-day ofkindergarten for at-risk students (extended-day Kindergarten, EDK), and four taughtremedial reading students in the primary grades. The professional development usedan inquiry process, with teachers first identifying what they already do, then reflectingon it, seeking information about their areas of concern and experimenting withimprovements in practice in their own classrooms.

Professional development process

The teachers used a process of systematic and intentional inquiry (Moss 2002) focusedon examining the beliefs and assumptions they held about formative assessment.Teachers were encouraged to experiment with formative assessment in their owncontexts (Wiliam et al. 2004). They used asynchronous postings to an online bulletinboard to file three separate progress reports, each roughly one month apart. In eachreport, the teachers were asked to identify four things: an area of concern that they hadregarding the use of formative assessment in their classroom; their learning agenda;what they assumed to be true regarding formative assessment and how their assump-tions were changing; and in what ways their focus on formative assessment wasconnecting to their classroom practice.

All three researchers provided specific feedback to each post. All participants inthe learning group were able to read all posts and all responses.

In addition, teachers met eight times during the school year for guided discussionswhere they shared their insights, strategies, and beliefs. Five of the meetings occurredin their district, and three were held on the university campus. During those meetings,

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the researchers responded to questions and provided information regarding specificaspects of formative assessment that arose during the discussions.

As a final activity, the teachers were asked to post final thoughts to the onlinebulletin board. In the post the teachers were asked to describe these ideas: their currentunderstanding of the term ‘formative assessment’ in the classroom, and how (if at all)it had changed during the project; the formative assessment practice(s) they experi-mented with during the project; and what they learned from their experimentation,both about students and about themselves as teachers.

Data and analysis

Qualitative data sources to discover what teachers learned and what formative assess-ment practices they investigated (research questions 1 and 2) included: teacher onlinepostings in response to questions; notes from the three researchers from each face toface meeting (three meetings at the university and five at the school district, spreadthroughout the year); notes from the district reading supervisor (the third author) asshe observed the teachers in the course of their regular work; and student worksamples provided by the six teachers.

Analysis methods included drafting six within-case (teacher) summaries. Conclu-sions were warranted in two ways: by triangulating the evidence (did all four datasources agree?) and by agreement among analysts as the cases were written. Consensusabout cases was arrived at by ‘virtual’ case analysis meetings (Miles and Huberman1994); communication among the three researchers about the cases was accomplishedelectronically.

Quantitative data sources (test scores) were used to investigate results for studentlearning (research question 3). The district used a set of measures called the DynamicIndicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) (Good and Kaminski 2002) as auniversal screening for all primary-aged students and for progress monitoring of at-risk students. DIBELS comprises six individually administered standardised measuresof early literacy development: Initial sound fluency, Phoneme segmentation fluency,Nonsense word fluency, Oral reading fluency, Letter naming fluency, and Word usefluency. DIBELS arrived in the United States along with the Reading First programmeof the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and became one of the recommended earlyliteracy assessments by the Reading Assessment Committee (Afflerbach 2007).DIBELS provides a quick overview of a child’s decoding skills. Literacy assessmentin DIBELS emphasises ‘replicability and generalizability… and [does] not permit anengagement with the individual being tested’ (Li and Zhang 2008, 46).

The primary focus of instruction for at-risk Kindergarten students was the learningof the letter names. All students in EDK (n=117) were tested in September, Januaryand May using the DIBELS Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) measure. First Gradeconcentrated on blending sounds to make words (simple decoding). First Grade at-riskstudents (n=151) were tested at the same intervals using the DIBELS PhonemeSegmentation Fluency (PSF) measure.

Students’ DIBELS scores were grouped according to whether the students’ teacherswere in the formative assessment group or not. ‘Formative assessment group’ studentsincluded all children served by a remedial reading teacher who was experimenting withformative assessment in this study. The comparison group was comprised of the otherat-risk students in the district in First Grade or extended-day Kindergarten, respectively.The only identifiable difference in the professional development opportunities afforded

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to the 17 reading specialists in the district was that six participated in the formativeassessment study and the other 11 did not. As noted, supervisor’s observations gaveevidence that all six teachers had intensified their formative assessment practices.Whether the teacher chose to focus special attention for her professional developmentproject in formative assessment on one student (as did Teachers #1, #2, and #3) or ongroups of students, changes in her own classroom practices would affect all the studentsshe instructed. Therefore, it was reasoned, students of the six participants were exposedto more intentional use of formative assessment than students of the other 11 remedialreading teachers. Thus group comparisons describe what happened to students exposedto the ‘intervention’ of teacher intentional learning about formative assessment.

Analysis methods included first checking group equivalence at pre-test (Septem-ber) with a t-test. Then, a mixed design ANOVA with two factors, Time (Sept, May)and Group (Formative assessment group, Comparison group) addressed the questionof whether changes in students over the year were similar for both groups.

Results

Teacher learning about formative assessment

This section describes teachers’ professional learning and changes in practice, thusaddressing the first two research questions. The extended-day Kindergarten teachersfocused on students who were experiencing difficulty in being able to identify lettersof the alphabet. Two primary teachers focused on the decoding of words with FirstGrade students and two looked at the classroom teachers’ use of formative assessment.All six teachers, including the two whose inquiry projects were about formativeassessment at the classroom level, changed their own formative assessment practices.Evidence for this comes from both their own self-reports and their supervisor’sobservations.

The six remedial reading teachers in this study chose to experiment with one ormore of the following modified assessment practices:

● Letter cards (student files cards in a box for letters he says ‘slow’, ‘medium’,and ‘fast’)

● Customising letter-naming drills for students so any given drill included mostlyletters known, and one or two unknown, to the particular student

● Expanded monitoring and conferencing with students● Progress cards listing student goals and noting when students worked on them● Keeping records of the feedback given to students during reading and giving

students ‘goals’ on the basis of these notes● Intentional comments to students regarding specific positive accomplishments● Observing the regular classroom teacher to see how formative assessment uses

were similar to and different from their own work with students● Constructing an observational tool for formative assessment in the classroom

(this tool was not completed by the end of the year)

Both the teachers approaching formative assessment by concentrating on individ-ual children and the teachers approaching it by concentrating on classroom instructionmore generally exhibited similar themes or patterns in their learning. Eight strongthemes were common to all six cases. Table 1 presents example quotations, drawn

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Table 1. Examples from teacher reflections that illustrate themes.

Theme Example

1. Mindfulness [Beginning, middle, and end postings]: I know that I use formative assessment, but I rarely take the time to analyse it, and do something with it. … I plan on reflecting on my instruction on a consistent basis. I assess students weekly on the reading intervention programme that I use. I would like to use that assessment as a tool to drive my instruction more. I will also use daily observations of my interactions with students to determine their levels of learning and involvement. I would like to develop some sort of organised tool to record and reflect on my use of formative assessment. … The way that my view of formative assessment has changed is that I have integrated it more systematically into my daily teaching practices. Before I knew what it was. I provided feedback to my students, I made observations, but my feedback was not specific enough and my observations were not noted. – Teacher #4

2. Specificity We talk about what he [student] could do to better that [reading performance]. For example, he was having trouble with comprehending short stories and answering questions about it. He continued to miss the same genre of questions throughout the testing booklet. He thought that it may be a good idea to read the story 2 times so that he may better understand and to answer the questions better. – Teacher #1

3. Record-keeping Before I knew what it [formative assessment] was. I provided feedback to my students, I made observations, but my feedback was not specific enough and my observations were not noted. Now I realise that my feedback can be more meaningful to my students if it is specific, and that if I note my observations of students’ reading progress I am more likely to do something with this information. – Teacher #4

4. Student involvement

My idea of ‘formative assessment’ has been drastically expanded through this study group. I now understand how important it is to give STUDENTS quality information/feedback about how they are performing as well. When giving my students informal assessments in my classroom, I realise that the results of those assessments can be formative for the student. Their score or their observable success on the assessment can be formative as well as the specific comments that the teacher gives about what exactly was done correctly and/or how they could improve upon the skill tested. – Teacher #3

5. Moving from a focus on achievement to motivation

From: …right now I’ve been studying the behaviour of a child who is not grasping letters/numbers at steady rate, but shows great oral language skills and assessment. I am going to take a look at his rate of learning numbers/letters, look at his assessments, and go from there.

To: What can I continue to do to help my student to continue his success, motivation and to improve his metacognitive skills when it comes to sounding out words, reading, and tying it all together without setbacks that alter his performance? – Teacher #2

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verbatim from teachers’ online reflections or supervisor’s notes, to illustrate eachtheme. To read additional quotations that support these themes, see the case studies(Brookhart, Moss and Long 2007).

Teachers’ development in these eight areas may be summed up by a developmentalsequence, which was apparent in the teacher reflections over time:

● ‘Consciousness raising’ – becoming aware that they already do some things thatare formative,

● Skill-building – developing and using strategies, mostly centred around moreintentional record-keeping and feedback, goal setting, and sharing informationwith students and/or the regular classroom teacher, and

● Deeper understanding – realising the double-barrelled (both cognitive and moti-vational) power of sharing information with students, and the importance offeedback being specific and of note-taking.

Seven of the themes and selected evidence for them are presented below. Theeighth theme was about student outcomes, and will be discussed in the next section.Quotations from the qualitative data sources were selected and organised into cate-gories. Some pieces of evidence were coded as evidence for several differentthemes.

1. Mindfulness

These remedial reading teachers realised their work already contained a big formativecomponent. The teachers worked one-on-one or in very small groups, and gave feed-back to students as they read – for example, supplying difficult words as students readaloud. However, while they saw formative assessment as ‘like what we always do’,they found that as they focused more intentionally on formative assessment becauseof the project, they were more mindful of it, and observed that the quality of their

Table 1. (Continued).

Theme Example

6. Seeing formative assessment as instruction

Researcher noted that Teacher #5 said in discussion, ‘I didn’t gear [my project, an observation protocol to gauge level of formative assessment in classrooms] to one kid – I geared to the teachers I worked with… one of the teachers started to understand what it was, built groups – she seems to be now, even if I’m not there, differentiating groups. If kids are having a hard time, she stops.’ – Teacher #5

7. Self efficacy to artfully deliver scripted instruction

Teacher #1 modifies student materials to provide cues to make the student more successful. She uses DIBELS data to make instructional decisions about instructional strategies. During instruction, each student identified an area of fluency that he/she needed to work on (pause at punctuation, not like a robot, sound like the character). – Supervisor observation of Teacher #1

8. Student outcomes Researcher noted that Teacher #6 said in discussion: ‘I noticed differences in students when I changed lessons over to formative assessment – students were less off task and more engaged.’ [implied outcomes – being on-task and engaged]

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formative assessment became better. The project helped teachers see that while theirwork ‘always’ had been oriented to being formative for students, becoming moreintentional about that aspect of their work led to more skilful instruction on their partand better outcomes for their students.

2. Specificity

A second theme was that at the beginning of the project, teachers thought they werebeing ‘specific’ with their feedback, but learned that more specificity was needed.They discovered that in many cases they had not been providing students with infor-mation that was focused enough to help the student actually do something differentthat would lead to improvement. Some teachers’ reflections described the specificthings they attuned to, for example, comprehension questions (Teacher #1) or letterrecognition patterns (Teacher #3). Some (Teachers #4 and #6) simply drew theconclusion that they had become more specific in their work.

3. Record-keeping

A third theme was that the intentionality and specificity needed for effective formativeassessment required more, and more systematic, note-taking and record-keeping thanteachers were used to. The researchers did not tell the teachers to take more notes.Rather, unprompted, four of the six teachers discovered that in order to providespecific formative feedback and keep track of what students needed, they wanted andneeded to take more notes. Some readers might think this theme is a procedural issueand not equal to the other, more conceptual, themes. However, we believe it is impor-tant. This theme runs counter to a common finding in action research that teachers tryto avoid extra paperwork. It is telling that teachers concluded the benefits of moreprecise feedback were worth extra record-keeping.

4. Student involvement

A fourth theme was about student involvement. Because these were remedial readingteachers, they already worked more intensively with individual students than manyclassroom teachers do. However, they found that formative assessment requires clearcommunication with students and requires the students actually to use assessmentinformation. This realisation resulted in a reported change in focus even for thesealready fairly student-oriented teachers. All six teachers expressed an increased reali-sation of the importance of students understanding both their strengths and what theyneed to work on. They also expressed an increased realisation of how important it isfor the students to want to do well.

Teacher #4 used ‘postcards’ with formative feedback and goals for readingimprovement. She sent these cards home with students. She found a developmentaldifference in students’ responses to this strategy. Third graders loved it, and wereactive participants in the strategy. First Graders responded well to the feedback andgoals presented orally, but did not respond as well to the progress cards. Thismakes sense, in that students would have to be able to read a little bit to use thecards. Third Graders could do this, but First Graders were still working on letterrecognition.

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5. From achievement to motivation

A fifth theme is teacher movement from an achievement orientation to a focus onmotivation, too. Most of the teachers’ statements of concern began with a statementabout student learning (for example, a student not knowing the letters of the alphabet),and all of them quickly enlarged to become statements of concern about motivation,as well. This was primarily a result of their observing how excited students got whenformative assessment practices gave them some awareness of and control over theirown learning needs.

6. Formative assessment as instruction and differentiation

A sixth theme comes from the way teachers described their formative assessmentpractices. Teachers’ language about formative assessment was not ‘assessmentlanguage’. The language teachers used in their reflections was the language of instruc-tion. They talked about formative assessment as an ‘instructional strategy’, and theylinked it with differentiating instruction. Formative assessment was discussed as ateaching method that led inevitably to differentiating instruction. Teachers assumedthat if one practices formative assessment seriously one will necessarily end up differ-entiating instruction.

7. Self efficacy to artfully deliver scripted instruction

Teachers began to demonstrate an increase in self-efficacy which resulted in a moreartful delivery of the scripted instruction they were required to use. Instruction wasmodified according to the information they received from the students. Being ableto maintain the integrity of the instructional script, and at the same time adjustdelivery based on direct feedback from students, resulted in more focused, artfulteaching.

Unlike themes 1–6, these portions of the case studies were not from the teachers’own reflections. The district had selected reading programmes with scripted instruc-tion with mixed feelings, according to the supervisor, but had decided that the scriptedprogrammes would ensure the students got ‘at least’ a certain baseline instruction. Thesupervisor (the third author) was surprised to observe that even teachers who are usingscripted instructional programmes could employ formative assessment techniques anddifferentiate instruction on a just-in-time basis. She was pleased to find that teachersfound a way not only to make formative assessment compatible with scripted instruc-tion, but actually to enhance it.

For example, Teacher #4 augmented the Read Well programme’s scripted fluencychecks by developing a more sophisticated monitoring system that provided studentswith the feedback needed to help them improve their fluency and decoding skills. Bythe end of the project year, several other teachers had adopted this method of record-ing feedback and concurrent reading performance.

Student learning as a result of increased formative assessment

This section takes up the eighth theme focusing on the teacher perceptions of studentoutcomes from the qualitative data, followed by the quantitative analyses of studenttest data.

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8. Student outcomes

The eighth theme from the case studies was about the holistic results of using forma-tive assessment. The remedial reading teachers were very concerned about readingachievement, of course. However, they discussed formative assessment as causing anobservable increase in student achievement, motivation, time on task, and engage-ment. Thus teachers observed as effects of formative assessment for their studentsboth learning outcomes and motivational outcomes. The kinds of things teachersconsidered ‘student outcomes’ broadened beyond the atomistic achievement measuresthat were part of their instructional programmes. By the end of the year, the teacherswere considering academic outcomes related to learning to read and also motivation,on-task behaviour, and self-monitoring as outcomes of instruction.

Test results

First, pre-test scores were compared to assure statistical equivalence of achievementin the two groups of students in September. Both groups were equivalent at baseline.Kindergarten students in each group did not differ on DIBELS Letter Naming Fluency(LNF) scores in September (t=.80, df=115, p=.43; means are in Table 2). First Gradestudents in each group did not differ on DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency(PSF) scores in September (t=.88, df=149, p=.38; means are in Table 3).

After establishing that the groups were equivalent in September, an ANOVAaddressed the question of whether changes in students over the year were similar forstudents of teachers who concentrated on formative assessment (FA) and those whodid not. For Kindergarten LNF scores and First Grade PSF scores, respectively, a 2 X2 mixed design ANOVA compared scores by group (FA teacher, non-FA teacher) andacross time (September, May). A significant interaction effect in this design wouldindicate that change from September to May was not the same for students in the twogroups.

Table 2 presents the results for Kindergarten. Achievement improved for allstudents from September to May (effect of Time: F(1,114) = 542.11, p=.00, partialη2=.83). There was no main effect for group (F(1,114) = 0.91, p=.34, partial η2=.01),

Table 2. Extended day kindergarten DIBELS LNF results.

Descriptive statistics

Pre-test Mean (s.d.) Post-test Mean (s.d.) Sample size

FA* group 9.94 (12.75) 47.94 (13.67) 31Not in FA group 8.16 (10.52) 45.35 (15.73) 85Total 8.64 (11.13) 46.04 (15.19) 116

ANOVA – Time (pre, post) by Group (FA, not)

Source SS df MS F p Partial eta squared

Time 64,208.48 1 64,208.48 542.11 .000 .826Group 215.25 1 215.25 .91 .343 .008Interaction 7.48 1 7.48 .06 .802 .001

* FA = Formative Assessment professional development group.

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and there was no interaction effect (F(1,114) = 0.06, p=.80, partial η2=.00). ThusTable 2 shows that at-risk Kindergarten students in both groups learned the letters ofthe alphabet during the year to about the same level of achievement.

Table 3 presents the results for First Grade. Achievement improved for all studentsfrom September to May (effect of Time: F(1,149) = 122.17, p=.00, partial η2=.45).There was a main effect for group (F(1,149) = 7.88, p=.01, partial η2=.05). There wasan interaction effect (F(1,149) = 5.51, p=.02, partial η2=.04). The interaction effectshows that the change from September to May was differentially larger for thestudents of teachers in the formative assessment group, with a small effect size (4%variance accounted for). Figure 1 graphs this effect. Although the two groups had beenrandomly equivalent in September, the change over the year separated the groups’performance (from pre-test means 2.53 score points apart to post-test means 9.39

Table 3. First Grade DIBELS PSF results.

Descriptive Statistics

Pre-test Mean (s.d.) Post-test Mean (s.d.) Sample size

FA* group 40.63 (16.53) 60.20 (11.18) 109Not in FA group 38.10 (13.89) 50.81 (14.95) 42Total 39.93 (15.83) 57.59 (13.00) 151

ANOVA – Time (pre, post) by Group (FA, not)

Source SS df MS F p Partial eta squared

Time 15,798.62 1 15,798.62 122.17 .000 .451Group 2157.53 1 2157.53 7.88 .006 .050Interaction 712.24 1 712.24 5.51 .020 .036

* FA = Formative Assessment professional development group.

Figure 1. Graph of means to illustrate the time x group interaction on First Grade DIBELSPSF scores.

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points apart). This change was large enough to result in a small main effect for group(5% variance accounted for), as well.Figure 1. Graph of means to illustrate the time x group interaction on First Grade DIBELS PSF scores.

Discussion

These results speak both to the teacher inquiry professional development process andto the effects of formative assessment, especially student involvement, on at-risk earlyliteracy students. This section discusses each of these in turn, ending with somecomments on the study’s limitations and a discussion of future research.

Professional learning

The six teachers were not a formal ‘professional learning community’ (McLaughlinand Talbert 2006). Nevertheless, their active participation in seminar-like meetings ledto some of the same benefits as professional learning communities, including a sharedunderstanding of the concept of formative assessment. That a shared understanding wasdeveloped can be deduced from the consensus among all six teachers about what theylearned, and from the development (from consciousness-raising through skill-buildingto deeper understanding) apparent in their successive reflections as they learned it. Allbecame more specific and mindful with regard to formative assessment. All integratedit more seamlessly into their instruction, indeed coming to see formative assessmentas part of instruction.

As their supervisor observed, this integration went beyond simply adding an activityor ‘doing formative assessment’ once in a while. The teachers intentionally viewed theirplanning, teaching, communication, feedback, and day-to-day, minute-by-minute inter-actions with their students as opportunities for putting formative assessment to work.All moved strongly in the direction of student involvement and of appreciation for therole that student motivation plays in the formative process. They began to see theirstudents as partners in the teaching learning process and increasingly viewed theirstudents as capable of monitoring their own learning process. In fact, all of them beganto see what they called student ‘motivation’ as a learning outcome. Students felt moreautonomy and control over their own learning (Ames and Archer 1988; Butler andWinne 1995).

Active participation in inquiry learning in their own classrooms increased teacherperceptions of professional improvement, a known benefit of teacher inquiry (Henson1996). These feelings of professional improvement were apparent in the case studiesof all six teachers. The theme of ‘mindfulness’ most particularly demonstrates this.For example, Teacher #1 wrote: ‘I think I’m better at it [formative assessment] now.I consciously think about it more and implement it’.

The other theme that supports the idea of increased professional growth is thetheme of increased self-efficacy to deliver scripted instruction artfully. As the teachersbecame more familiar with and more skilled at using formative assessment, theybegan to see it as a learning process that can comfortably co-exist with other initiativesin their classroom. The fact that they were able to find ways to modify their instruc-tion, even when faced with a highly scripted context, in order to respond to studentlearning needs, points to a critical aspect of professional learning – change of belief.Because of the scripted nature of the instructional programmes adopted by the district(The Letter People and ReadWell), the teachers had assumed they were powerless todeviate from the script. During the course of their professional learning, however, the

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teachers came to believe that they had the right and the obligation to use the data onstudent learning to provide the strategies and feedback that would result in the studentbeing able to reach the learning target.

Belief change is neither easy to accomplish, nor something that another person canprovide. One way that belief change can happen is when teachers genuinely questiontheir current understandings, test those understandings against evidence from theirpractice, and then alter their beliefs to fit their new understandings (Schreiber andMoss 2002). This is the kind of belief transformation that is evidenced by theirincreased efficacy to alter the instructional process they were used to using. There aremany researchers who feel that DIBELS perpetuates the practice of teaching to the test(Goodman 2006; Afflerbach 2007; Samuels 2007). In fact, Afflerbach proposed thatDIBELS’s influence on the way literacy is addressed in early childhood classroomsnot only sends the wrong message to teachers, parents and students, but also forcesteachers to focus on instruction that leads to fast reading without comprehension.Clearly, the teachers in this study no longer felt forced in that way.

Effects on students

Henson (1996) noted that many more studies of teacher inquiry have reported resultsin terms of teacher perceptions than in terms of student achievement. This study wentbeyond perceptions and noted a small, but measurable, benefit for remedial readingstudents exposed to formative assessment practices, at least in the First Grade. The lackof difference for Kindergarten is probably due to the fact that the measure was simplyletter naming, and overall students in both groups, after a full day of instruction for awhole year, learned the letters. The fact that the effect was small, and not larger, forFirst Graders may also be related to the measure, which was phoneme segmentationfluency, that is, ability at sounding out words. Formative assessment encourages anholistic approach to learning, and the DIBELS measure was designed to support themore component or building-block style reading instruction required in this district andconsistent with federal reporting and funding requirements. In other words, the teachersbegan to see reading fluency as more than what Samuels (2007) called ‘barking at print’.

Teachers reported seeing effects on student motivation and feelings of control. Itis important to consider the students when interpreting these effects. In the United States,Kindergarten and First Grade students would be mostly five- and six-year-olds. Thestudents in this study were not only very young, they were also identified as at-riskreaders. Observations about motivation increasing for students like these are particularlyencouraging for two very critical reasons. First, teachers came to believe that these youngreaders were capable of regulating their own reading once they were taught the skillsto do so. And, just as importantly, they increasingly recognised formative assessmentas being integral to a balanced literacy perspective – one that helps both the teacherand the student uncover student strengths so as to discover what the student needs tolearn next or to learn more (Li and Zhang 2008). As teachers and their students celebratedstrengths and concentrated on shared ways to improve literacy, both the teachers andtheir students made more thoughtful use of assessments in ways that motivated them.

Limitations and future research

The study was limited by the intense nature of the professional development (sixteachers and three researchers) and by the limitations of the DIBELS measures.

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Questions arise as to whether this professional development will retain its good effectswhen scaled up to include more teachers, and about whether other measures might bemore suitable for gauging effects on student achievement. In fact, the project is scalingup, with more teachers in the district participating and most recently with school lead-ers as well. To date, the DIBELS measures required for district record-keeping havebeen the available student outcomes measures. The researchers are working on a datacollection plan that might be more sensitive to the outcomes of teacher professionaldevelopment in formative assessment.

Note1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American

Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL, April 2007.

Notes on contributorsSusan M. Brookhart is Senior Research Associate at the Center for Advancing the Study ofTeaching and Learning (CASTL) in the School of Education at Duquesne University. She isalso an independent consultant and author. Her research interests include the role of classroomassessment in student motivation and achievement, the connection between classroom assess-ment and large-scale assessment, and grading.

Connie M. Moss is Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Advancing the Study ofTeaching and Learning (CASTL) in the School of Education at Duquesne University. Herresearch interests include teacher professional development in assessment and the connectionbetween teaching practices and student motivation.

Beverly A. Long is Director of Federal Programs in Armstrong School District, Ford City, PA.

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Documents

Teacher inquiry into formative assessment practices in remedial reading classrooms