Combatting the detrimental lack of understanding of how formative assessment works to improve student performance in mathematics: Identifying important mechanisms

Formative assessment (FA) is a classroom practice in which teachers and/or students elicit evidence of student learning needs through assessment and then adapt teaching or learning to these needs.

Research reviews show that classroom practices that adhere to the principles of FA can accomplish large gains in student performance, but do not always do so.

The research community lacks an understanding of the underlying mechanisms responsible for the effects, which limits the capabilities to design FA that accomplish the large effects on student learning that research has proven possible.The aim of the project is to identify mechanisms by which FA works to improve student performance in mathematics.

To achieve this aim, 500 upper-secondary school students from two countries will be randomly subjected to one of six different teacher practices that will vary with respect to core FA processes.

We will investigate the connections between the characteristics of, and interactions between, these FA processes and students’ mathematical reasoning, motivation, and performance.Data will be collected through mathematics tests, questionnaires, and audio-recordings of student think-aloud protocols and teacher utterances.The quantitative data analysis will include structural equation modelling of the connections between variables, and the qualitative data will be used to provide more detailed descriptions of the FA practices and students’ mathematical reasoning.