Australian Journal of Teacher Education - Vol 46 - Issue 7 - Article 1 - How Teachers Use Formative Assessment Strategies During Teaching, Evidence from the Classroom

Oct 15, 2026

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The study investigates how two practising secondary mathematics teachers implemented formative assessment actions in their classroom teaching. Lesson observations examine whether teachers’ beliefs about teaching and assessment map onto their classroom practices. While student portfolio assessment was used in Year 9 mathematics lessons, attention focuses on sharing learning criteria, activating students as resources, and delivering feedback that advances learners. Findings suggest differing levels of formative assessment uptake and emerging understanding.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages22

Reading Time55 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Measurement-driven assessment challenges

Formative assessment and feedback in teaching

Teachers' beliefs and classroom actions

Research aims and questions

Australian Journal of Teacher Education | Volume 46 Issue 7 | Article 1 | | --- | --- | | 2021
How Teachers use Formative Assessment Strategies during Teaching: Evidence from the Classroom
Hem Chand Dayal
The University of the South Pacific
Follow this and additional works at: [https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte](https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte)
Part of the Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons, and the Secondary Education Commons | | Recommended Citation Dayal, H. C. (2021) . How Teachers use Formative Assessment Strategies during Teaching: Evidence from the Classroom. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 46(7) . [http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2021v46n7.1](http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2021v46n7.1) [This Journal Article is posted at Research Online.](This Journal Article is posted at Research Online.)[ ](This Journal Article is posted at Research Online.)[https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte/vol46/iss7/1](https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte/vol46/iss7/1) How Teachers Use Formative Assessment Strategies During Teaching: Evidence from the Classroom Hem Chand Dayal The University of the South Pacific Abstract: Using lesson observations, the study reported in this article explores how two practising secondary mathematics teachers implemented formative assessment actions in their classroom teaching. The study also investigated whether teachers’ beliefs about teaching and assessment could be mapped onto their classroom practices. In particular, while the two teachers were implementing student portfolio assessment in their own Year 9 mathematics lessons, the classroom observations focused on how they utilised formative assessment actions such as clarifying and sharing learning criteria intentions and criteria for success; activating students as instructional resources; and, providing feedback that moves learners forward. The findings suggest that one of the teachers made better use offormative assessment or assessment for learning actions while the other showed an emerging understanding of such ideas. A holistic analysis of teachers’ actions point to possible links to their beliefs about teaching and assessment. These findings imply that some teachers may hold productive beliefs about teaching and assessment that support the use formative assessment actions more readily. Such productive beliefs provide a useful platform for enacting better assessments inside secondary classrooms, given that there is paucity of research that deals with how secondary teachers make use offormative assessments. The findings implicitly confirm that better use of formative assessment strategies tend to result in more interactive lessons. Introduction Assessment in education has generally reflected a “measurement-driven” approach that serves purposes such as ranking students and keeping schools accountable (Watt, 2005; Popham, 2014; Carless & Lam, 2014; Wyatt-Smith & Klenowski, 2014) . With changes in our understandings about how children learn, these assessment methods have been challenged (NRC, 2000, 2001, 2005; Popham, 2014 ; Blackburn, 2017) . For example, the sociocultural approach to learning challenges the significance given to measurement-driven assessments (Smith, Hill, Cowie & Gilmore, 2014 Heritage 2014; Earl & Timperley, 2014; Cowie 2005; Willis & Cowie, 2014) and calls for a need for a change to different types of assessment techniques (Wyatt-Smith, Klenowski & Colbert, 2014; Popham 2014; Looney, 2014 ; Murchan & Shiel, 2017) . Formative assessments, or assessments for learning, often capture many other varieties of assessments that teachers design and use. Formative assessment is an umbrella term that includes a variety of actions undertaken by teachers and/or students which provide information that can be used as feedback to guide teaching and learning (Black & Wiliam, 1998) . A further requirement proposed by Cowie and Bell (

FAQs

What formative assessment actions were observed in the Year 9 mathematics classrooms?

The observations focused on clarifying and sharing learning criteria intentions and criteria for success, activating students as instructional resources, and providing feedback that moves learners forward.

How does the study connect teachers’ beliefs to their classroom practices?

It investigates whether teachers’ beliefs about teaching and assessment align with and map onto the formative assessment actions they enact in their teaching.

What overall outcome does the study suggest about formative assessment strategies?

Better use of formative assessment strategies is implicitly linked to more interactive lessons, and productive beliefs may support more readily implemented formative assessment actions.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by Franzy