This qualitative case study explored the writing assessment practices of upper elementary ELA teachers and factors that influenced their decision making when assessing student writing. Effective assessment practices are important because these practices can aid teachers in identifying student needs, designing tailored writing instruction, and monitoring student progress. This study included 5 teacher participants from 3rd to 5th grade. Participants were viewed as 1 case bound by their grade band and employment in a district focused on teaching and assessing writing. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, a think aloud task, a review of assessment artifacts and the researcher’s reflective journal. Analysis was completed following a five-phase model. Findings included: (1) teachers’ efficacy of assessing student writing is influenced by support received, (2) strengthening teachers’ assessment practices requires personalized, ongoing PD, (3) context influences teachers’ decision making when assessing student writing, and (4) teachers have varying levels of knowledge of formatively assessing student writing. These findings suggest implications for state administrators, district and school administrators, classroom teachers, curriculum leaders, and university programs.

Cette recherche documente les façons de faire l’évaluation formative d’enseignants de français du Lycée exerçant en contexte de classes pléthoriques au Sénégal. Le choix récent dans ce pays de l’approche par compétences invite à privilégier cette fonction de l’évaluation, au regard de son potentiel pour la progression des apprentissages des élèves (Allal & Mottier Lopez, 2005; Black & Wiliam, 2009; Morrissette, 2010). Cependant, les orientations ministérielles concernant sa mise en œuvre sont très générales, et jusqu’ici, la recherche a laissé dans l’ombre son application en contexte de classes pléthoriques. Puisant au domaine des savoirs pratiques (Schön, 1983) et à une vision interactive et située de l’évaluation formative (Mottier Lopez, 2007; Morrissette, 2010), j’ai conduit une démarche de recherche collaborative auprès de 14 enseignants de français exerçant dans le même Lycée, ponctuée par 6 entretiens de groupe. Un premier registre d’analyse a décrit des façons de faire rattachées à trois dimensions de la pratique de l’évaluation formative: l’analyse du contexte de la pratique, la construction négociée du savoir et la gestion de l’effectif. Un second registre d’analyse de leurs façons de faire en contexte d’«étrangeté culturelle» (Douville, 2002) a permis de conceptualiser leur savoir-évaluer en relation avec leur façon d’interpréter les problèmes qui se posent aux élèves, leur conception de l’erreur et leurs manières de réinventer les modes d’accomplissement traditionnels de l’évaluation ancrés dans la culture scolaire. / This research documents the ways formative assessment is operationalized by French teachers working in the context of overcrowded classrooms in a Senegalese High School. The recent choice for implementing the competency-based approach in this country invites teachers to promote the use of formative assessment which is geared towards the provision of high quality learning (Allal & Mottier Lopez, 2005, Black & Wiliam, 2009 Morrissette, 2010). However, Ministerial guidelines for its implementation are very general, and so far, research has not been carried out as regards its application in overcrowded classes. Building on the field of reflective practice (Schön, 1983) and an interactive situated vision of formative assessment (Mottier Lopez, 2007; Morrissette, 2010), I led a collaborative research with 14 French teachers working in the same High School. Six focus groups discussions were carried out which shed light on three dimensions related to formative assessment practices: contextual analysis of teacher practices, the negotiated construction of knowledge and the management of the overcrowded classrooms. Analysis of formative assessment practices in the context of « cultural strangeness » (free translation) (Douville, 2002) helped to conceptualize their know-how on evaluation in light of how they interpret the problems faced by students, their conception of what error constitutes and the ways they reinvent the traditional performance evaluation methods rooted in the school culture.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the challenges affecting teachers’ classroom assessment practices and to explore how these challenges influence effective teaching and learning. The study was qualitative in nature and employed an instrumental case study approach. Semi-structured interviews, observations, and document analyses were used in the investigation. The study utilized the conceptual framework based on the model suggested by Hargreaves, Earl and Schmidt (2002). The model comprised four perspectives – technological, cultural, political and postmodern, with the intention of accounting for teachers’ assessment practices. Teachers from four different schools in North West Province were interviewed and observed. The data collected through the observations and interviews allowed me to map out the different challenges encountered by teachers in their classroom assessment practices. I also analysed documents that teachers used in conducting assessment. Document analysis was used to triangulate the information collected through observations and interviews. Textual data was analysed using content analysis. The teachers’ narratives varied according to their teaching experience and background within the diverse contexts of their particular school environments. Major challenges that emanated from this study were policy interpretation, overcrowding, support, parental involvement, moderation mechanisms (internal and external), assessment planning, implementation and communication as well as lack of resources. In order to address these challenges, teachers relied on cluster meetings, their colleagues and mostly their personal experiences. The study also revealed that teachers’ understanding and practices of classroom assessment are influenced by their social and educational context. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / D. Ed. (Curriculum Studies)

Initial teacher education is constantly in the spotlight regarding its quality and its effectiveness. The literature contains many claims from those who believe that it is ineffectual. The notion of the reflective practitioner was introduced and embraced as an antidote to these claims, and as an approach to break the influence of technocratic beliefs and expectations which pre-service teachers bring with them to their initial teacher education. Typically reflection targets the practicum experience. However, this study focuses specifically on the contribution of course work to the development of a reflective beginning teacher. This qualitative study invited pre-service teachers to provide insight into their initial teacher education experience: initially within a Teaching of Science methods paper, and then some 18 months later at the conclusion of their three year Bachelor of Education (Teaching) professional preparation. A critical reflexive interpretive methodology which sought authenticity within its meaning-making process developed from an initial consideration of self-study research methodology. Of particular importance was that the enquiry was authentic, participants' voices were valued and recognition was given to the implications embedded within the context within which the study occurred. Methods of data collection included in phase one were: a pre-course questionnaire, a Gestalt-like activity, and pre-service teachers' email reflections based on Hoban's (2000a) categories of learning influences, and meta-reflections from the Teaching of Science paper. The journal I kept during this phase was also drawn upon as data. Phase two data collection included a vignette, and a three part final questionnaire to which 40 pre-service teachers and nine teacher educators responded. The findings suggest that pre-service teachers' understanding of the nature of education is critical to the way in which they experience the course work within initial teacher education. This understanding shapes their perception and consideration lens through which course work is experienced. On entrance to initial teacher education this lens is described, for many pre-service teachers, as technocratic. Education is seen as a commodity, something to acquire, teaching is telling and initial teacher education is dependent on the teacher educator providing the necessary tools and techniques so the beginning teacher can do the right thing. This study suggests that such a stance toward educational experiences is a hindrance mechanism when teacher educators seek transformative teaching, learning, and reflexivity. However, when that view of education is as a process of growth and transformation toward a valued 'way of being', the perspective and consideration lens is described as professional. Rather than focusing on what a teacher does, the focus is on whom the teacher is and how this influences the teaching and learning process. Teacher educators and the institution which is the context within which course work occurs also demonstrate a mixture of technocratic and professional lenses. Important factors within initial teacher education which contribute to transformation from technocratic to professional lens include relational and pedagogical connectedness. These factors lead to valuing, ownership and justification of learning where assessment tasks are tools for personal development and where critical consideration of multiple perspectives has an important role. Relational connectedness (to self, peers, and teacher educators) is important for developing a safe, but challenging, dialogical space in which paradoxes, challenges and pre-service teachers' vulnerable sense of disorientation may be engaged. Pedagogical connectedness relates to the fit between what the teacher educator says and does. For example, a powerful approach to learning is where the pre-service teachers learn to be reflexive, by being reflexive. The study indicates the importance of institutional congruency so that what is espoused is experienced through language, assessment, teaching approaches and contextual culture. However, pre-service teachers' perception and consideration lens determines the degree to which course work is transformational. Where a technocratic lens is dominant, reflection becomes a task to be completed. Where a professional lens is dominant, reflection becomes an iterative process for improving practice by becoming professionally self aware through identifying assumptions in decisions and responses within the learning/teaching relationship, and judging those assumptions for their appropriateness in the light of a developing and critiqued personally owned educational vision.

Since 2006 Swedish compulsory school teachers are required to use individual developmentplans (IDPs) as part of their assessment practices. The IDP has developed through two major reforms and is currently about to undergo a third in which requirements for documentation are to be reduced. The original purpose of IDP was formative: a document containing targets and strategies for the student's future learning was to be drawn up at the parent-pupil-teacher meetingeach semester. The 2008 reform added requirements for written summative assessments/grade-like symbols to be used in the plan. This thesis aims to generate knowledge of the IDP as a tool in terms of what characterizes IDP documents as well as teachers' descriptions of continuous IDP work. It contains four articles. The first two are based on 379 collected IDP documents from all stages of compulsoryschool, and the last two build on interviews with 15 teachers. Throughout, qualitative content analysis has been used for processing data. The analytical framework comprises Latour's conceptual pair inscription – translation, Wartofsky's notions of primary/secondary/tertiary artifacts, and Wertsch's distinction between mastery and appropriation, which together provide an overall framework for understanding how the IDP becomes a contextually shaped tool that mediates teachers' actions in practice. Moreover, the activity theoretical concept of contradictionis used to understand and discuss dilemmas teachers experience in relation to IDP. In article 1, targets and strategies for future learning given to students are investigated and discussed in relation to definitions of formative assessment. Concepts were derived from the data and used for creating a typology of target and strategy types related either to being aspects (students' behavior/attitudes/personalities) or to subject matter learning. In article 2, the distribution of being and learning targets to boys and girls, respectively, is investigated. The results point to a significant gendered difference in the distribution of being targets. Possible reasons for the gendered distribution are discussed from a doing-gender perspective, and the proportion of being targets in IDPs is discussed from an assessment validity point of view. In article 3, teachers' continuous work with IDPs is explored, and it is suggested that IDP work develops in relation to perceived purposes and the contextual conditions framing teachers' work. Three qualitatively different ways of perceiving and working with IDP are described in a typology. Article 4 elaborates on dilemmas that teachers experience in relation to IDP, concerning time, communication, and assessment. A tentative categorization of dilemma management strategies is also presented. Results are synthesized in the final part of the thesis, where the ways in which documents are written and IDP work is carried out are discussed as being shaped in the intersection between rules and guidelines at national, municipal and local school level, and companies creating solutions for IDP documentation. Various purposes are to be achieved with the help of the IDP, which makes it a potential field of tension that is not always easy for teachers to navigate. Several IDP-related difficulties, but also opportunities and affordances, are visualized in the studies of this thesis. / <p>Svensk sammanfattning: s. 111-126.</p>

SOBRAL, Adriana Eufrasio Braga. Ensino, aprendizagem e prática avaliativa dos professores de matematica, do ensino médio, em escolas de Fortaleza. 2006. 195 f. Tese (Doutorado em Educação) – Universidade Federal do Ceará. Faculdade de Educação, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação Brasileira, Fortaleza-CE, 2006. / Submitted by Raul Oliveira (raulcmo@hotmail.com) on 2012-07-03T13:16:58Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2006_Tese_AEBSobral (A senha é vinicius).pdf: 2276822 bytes, checksum: 572c0d479a672fe1520ef4e4bd9fdfe8 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Josineide Góis(josineide@ufc.br) on 2012-07-20T16:34:22Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2006_Tese_AEBSobral (A senha é vinicius).pdf: 2276822 bytes, checksum: 572c0d479a672fe1520ef4e4bd9fdfe8 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-07-20T16:34:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2006_Tese_AEBSobral (A senha é vinicius).pdf: 2276822 bytes, checksum: 572c0d479a672fe1520ef4e4bd9fdfe8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / This study has as its objective the evaluation the teaching, learning and assessment practices of mathematic teachers at Intermediate Level Schools in the city of Fortaleza. To attain this object the methodological perspective of MORIN was used. Morin insists that method is a route to be followed as the research develops. The sample was technically arrives at and it determined that 15 public schools and 10 private ones be used in the research from a universe of 282 schools. However, the study in fact covered 13 private schools and 17 public schools. Fifty seven mathematics teachers, currently teaching, were interviewed. The data was collected through interviews containing 14 closed questions and one open one. In each closed question the person being interviewed initially answered as follows on the scale: I agree, I agree in part, I disagree. This was followed by justifying his choice or opinion in more precise detail. All interviews were fully recorded on a tape recorder. Afterwards these recordings were transcribed and edited by the text editor Word for Windows. An analysis of the data was carried out in two stages: a description of the answers by means of Descriptive Statistics, using the program Statistical Package of Social Science (SPSS) and the elaboration into categories using the phenomenological method of reduction of Husserl. The final categories – traditional practice of teaching, renewed vision of teaching, deficient teaching, emphasis in the work of the teacher, - directed the analysis being carried out to characterize the conception of mathematic teachers at Intermediate Level regarding teaching, learning and academic assessment. The results showed that the teachers have consolidated ideas concerning their professional practice that when internalized need to be put into operation in practice. A considerable part of the teachers ideas are in accordance wit the legal determinations expresses in National Curriculum Parameters for Intermediate Teaching. / O trabalho de tese teve por objetivo avaliar a concepção de ensino, aprendizagem e prática avaliativa, de professores de Matemática, do Ensino Médio, de escolas da cidade de Fortaleza. No intuito de atingir o objetivo, partiu-se da perspectiva metodológica de MORIN, pela qual o método é um caminho a ser traçado, à medida que a pesquisa se desenvolve. Utilizou-se a técnica de amostragem e determinou-se a quantidade de 15 escolas, da rede pública, e 10 escolas privada, que seriam pesquisadas, de um universo de 282 escolas. No entanto, o trabalho de pesquisa foi feito em 13 escolas particulares e 17 públicas, sendo entrevistados, ao final, 57 professores de Matemática, em efetivo exercício profissional. Para a coleta de dados foi elaborado um roteiro de entrevista contendo 14 assertivas e 1 questão aberta. Para cada assertiva o entrevistado respondeu, inicialmente, à escala (concordo, concordo em parte, discordo) e, a seguir, justificou sua escolha externando sua opinião de forma mais detalhada. Para o registro desse procedimento, usou-se um gravador de fita cassete. Cada entrevista foi gravada, em sua íntegra, e depois transcrita usando-se o editor de texto Word for Windows. A análise dos dados foi feita em duas etapas: uma descrição das respostas por meio da Estatística Descritiva, utilizando-se o programa Statistical Parckage of Social Sciences (SPSS) e uma elaboração de categorias por meio do método de redução fenomenológica de HUSSERL. As categorias finais – prática tradicional de ensino, visão renovada de ensino, ensino deficitário, aprendizagem deficiente, ênfase no trabalho do professor – direcionaram a análise feita para caracterizar a concepção dos professores de Matemática, do Ensino Médio, sobre ensino, aprendizagem e prática avaliativa. Partindo-se da análise, apontou-se que o professorado possui idéias consolidadas advindas de suas vivências e práticas profissionais, que, estando internalizadas, precisam ser operacionalizadas na prática. Boa parte das idéias, do professorado, converge para as determinações legais expressas nos Parâmetros Curriculares Nacional para o Ensino Médio.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the challenges affecting teachers’ classroom assessment practices and to explore how these challenges influence effective teaching and learning. The study was qualitative in nature and employed an instrumental case study approach. Semi-structured interviews, observations, and document analyses were used in the investigation. The study utilized the conceptual framework based on the model suggested by Hargreaves, Earl and Schmidt (2002). The model comprised four perspectives – technological, cultural, political and postmodern, with the intention of accounting for teachers’ assessment practices. Teachers from four different schools in North West Province were interviewed and observed. The data collected through the observations and interviews allowed me to map out the different challenges encountered by teachers in their classroom assessment practices. I also analysed documents that teachers used in conducting assessment. Document analysis was used to triangulate the information collected through observations and interviews. Textual data was analysed using content analysis. The teachers’ narratives varied according to their teaching experience and background within the diverse contexts of their particular school environments. Major challenges that emanated from this study were policy interpretation, overcrowding, support, parental involvement, moderation mechanisms (internal and external), assessment planning, implementation and communication as well as lack of resources. In order to address these challenges, teachers relied on cluster meetings, their colleagues and mostly their personal experiences. The study also revealed that teachers’ understanding and practices of classroom assessment are influenced by their social and educational context. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / D. Ed. (Curriculum Studies)

This study focused on learners’ assessment practices in overcrowded classes in Kamwenge District, Uganda. Apart from a literature review, an empirical investigation based on qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect data by the researcher at 4 primary schools in Kamwenge district so as to find answers to the research questions. The empirical findings elicited that all teachers agreed that assessment was useful to them and had a clear idea of what classroom assessment was all about. An interpretive paradigm made it possible for the researcher to gain an in-depth understanding of learners’ assessment practices within their school contexts. There was a mismatch between what teachers said they do and what they practiced and this follows that the majority of teachers may have the theoretical knowledge of methods and tools used to assess learners but fail to translate it to classroom practice. / Educational Leadership and Management / M. Ed. (Educational Management)

This study focused on learners’ assessment practices in overcrowded classes in Kamwenge District, Uganda. Apart from a literature review, an empirical investigation based on qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect data by the researcher at 4 primary schools in Kamwenge district so as to find answers to the research questions. The empirical findings elicited that all teachers agreed that assessment was useful to them and had a clear idea of what classroom assessment was all about. An interpretive paradigm made it possible for the researcher to gain an in-depth understanding of learners’ assessment practices within their school contexts. There was a mismatch between what teachers said they do and what they practiced and this follows that the majority of teachers may have the theoretical knowledge of methods and tools used to assess learners but fail to translate it to classroom practice. / Educational Leadership and Management / M. Ed. (Educational Management)