Session Information
24 SES 02, Discourse and Communication in Mathematics Classrooms
Paper Session
Contribution
The formative assessment has assumed over the last few years a recognized importance in several curricular documents (NCTM, 2000). However, these orientations haven’t always had a correspondence on the teacher’s practice, although the research results point it out that this is a powerful way to the learning process (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Wiliam, 2007). There are several reasons that explain this situation, as the nature of the formative assessment, strongly connected with the teaching and learning perspective of the teacher, and the fact that this way of assessment has to happen in the everyday life of the classroom. It is often seen as something to add to what has already been done. Furthermore, the interactive quality between pupils and teacher is not always itself intentional and critical in the teacher’s behaviour.
In Portugal, the Project AREA (PTDC/CED/64970/2006) pretends to develop, to put into practice and evaluate assessment practices, integral to the teaching and learning process. The project team is composed of teachers from various levels of teaching and researchers.
One of the focuses of this project is to study feedback, in particular, the oral feedback that happens in the day life of the work between teacher and students. It is possible to have evidence that different teachers develops different feedback, either in different tasks (Santos & Pinto, 2008), either in a same task (Santos & Pinto, 2010). The present study pretends to understand: (i) the main characteristics of the oral feedback during a learning task; and (ii) the existence of patterns of feedback related to different moments during the classroom work.
Feedback is a key element of the assessment practices for learning (Sadler, 1989). Feedback is perceived as the information that shows how apart is the “performed” to the “expected” trying to minimize that difference. However, giving feedback is not a learning guarantee. The type of feedback and the way it is given can be differentially effective (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). It is the quality of feedback and not just the quantity that deserves our attention (Sadler, 1998). For example, feedback can help improving the students´ learning performance when: (i) feedback focuses what needs to be done, (ii) more detailed information is given on how to proceed; (iii) the student is given time in advance to think and work on a certain task (Santos, 2002; Wiliam, 1999). Closed questions, such as specific diagnosis questions, when repeated, might lead pupils to change their opinion quickly, looking only into finding the expected answer by the teacher without deeply thinking about it (Gipps, 1999). This way, the asking of direct and closed questions tends to have superficial answers, with low probability that the pupils think about them (Black et al., 2003). The opened and adapted questions about a specific subject might help the students to change their way of thinking and find new answers in a more comprehensively way, increasing the learning environment’s complexity. This practice, however, demands of the teacher a solid professional knowledge (Moyer & Milewicz, 2002).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
References Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education, 5(1), 7-74. Black, P.; Harrison, C.; Lee, C.; Marshall, B. & Wiliam, D. (2003). Assessment for learning. Putting into practice. London: Open University Press. Gipps, C. (1999). Socio-cultural aspects of assessment. Review of Research in Education, 24, 355-392. Hattie, J. & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112. Moyer, P. & Milewicz, E. (2002). Learning to question: categories of questioning used by preservice teachers during diagnostic mathematics interviews. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 5(4), 293-315. NCTM (2000). Principles and standards for school mathematics. Reston, VA: NCTM. Sadler, D. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, 18, 119-144. Santos, L. (2002). Auto-avaliação regulada: porquê, o quê e como? In Paulo Abrantes e Filomena Araújo (Orgs.), Avaliação das Aprendizagens. Das concepções às práticas (pp. 75-84). Lisboa: Ministério da Educação, Departamento do Ensino Básico. Santos, L. & Pinto, J. (2008). Teacher’s oral feedback and learning. Topic Study Group 36, ICME11 (http://tsg.icme11.org/document/get/688) Santos, L. & Pinto, J. (2010). O feedback no quotidiano da sala de aula. 22ème Colloque International de l’ADMEE – Europe, Janvier, Braga, Portugal. Wiliam, D. (1999). Formative assessment in mathematics. Equals: Mathematics and Special Educational Needs, 5(3), 8-11. Wiliam, D. (2007). Keeping learning on track. In F. Lester, Jr. (Ed.), Second handbook of research in mathematics. Teaching and learning. (pp. 1053-1098). Information Age Publishing: Charlote.
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