This Research and Development Award undertook to confirm the principles of formative assessment with students. Trainees were invited to use ICT to elaborate their practical and theoretical professional development in the area of assessment for learning by identifying, digitising and uploading to the web levelled examples of children’s science thinking to a virtual repository.
This project explored an ICT functionality designed to support trainees’ understanding and implementation of formative assessment practices in science education. The results of this project are useful for course designers and the resource implications have messages for managers.
Two strands of work were combined: first, innovative materials had been developed to support the formative assessment of science at Key Stages 1, 2 and 3, (Russell and McGuigan, 2003) in conjunction with QCA; secondly, an ERDF project made those formative assessments available on-line.
The sample was divided into a core sample of 15 PGCE science trainees who received more intensive support and for comparison a larger group of 227 BA and PGCE trainees.
The facility was found to be accessible and useful by those students who took advantage of the support on offer and found the time to integrate the functionality within the mandatory requirements of their School based Experience. Successful use of the system was illustrated. The facility required investment of time for baseline skill development to enable its use.
The researchers suggest that class teachers, acting in a supervisory and advisory role, may have seen this work as risky and as a consequence have been reluctant to encourage students to engage in it. This is a rational response and needs to be taken into consideration by trainers and course designers.
This work was supported by a TTA Research and Development Award. These awards were designed to contribute to the knowledge base in ITT and provide an opportunity for those new to ITT to collaborate with more experienced colleagues in research in areas relevant to their practice.
Keywords
Science; Assessment for learning; Formative-assessment; On-line ITT
LT Science-education; LT Assessment; LT Online systems
Authors :
Professor Terry Russell
Other Contributor :
Linda McGuigan, Tunde Varga Atkins, Rachel Walker, CRIPSAT University of Liverpool and Tim Griffiths, Liverpool Hope University College
Publisher :
TDA November 2004
Article Id :
11386
Date Posted:
4/6/2005