New Frontiers in Formative Assessment

“Formative assessment is a powerful learning tool that is too seldom, too haphazardly, and too ineffectively used in the United States,” Pendred E. Noyce writes in the introduction to this volume. “The purpose of this book is to delve into why this is so and how it can be changed.”

Formative assessment involves constantly monitoring student understanding through a combination of formal and informal measures. Teachers ask searching questions, listen over the shoulders of students working together on a problem, help students assess their own work, and carefully uncover students’ thinking. They react to what they learn by adjusting their teaching, thereby leading students to greater understanding.

This ongoing analysis and customization isn’t so easy to do. In the press of accountability, teachers often lack the time and confidence to adjust their lessons on a daily basis. They may lack the depth of content knowledge needed to analyze student misconceptions or see at what branch of reasoning the student went wrong. They may face constraints that make it difficult for them to work together on common problems.

New Frontiers in Formative Assessment is for educators who want to tap into the power of formative assessment. It showcases ongoing work that pushes the field of formative assessment forward in key ways. Drawn from a variety of classrooms in terms of age level, subject area, and use of technology, the chapters in this book highlight the importance of context in developing effective formative assessment practices. At the same time, the volume addresses the common elements of a successful formative assessment project—notably, high interest, manageability, impact, and validity—as well as some common barriers to implementation. Taken together, these projects illustrate the journey from assessment of learning to assessment for learning—and ultimately toward assessment as learning."

Pendred E. Noyce is a physician, author, and trustee of the Robert Noyce Foundation, which supports innovation and improvement in public education in mathematics, science, and literacy. She was educated at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Minnesota Hospitals, and she practiced internal medicine in the Boston area before pausing from medicine to work full-time on education issues. For eight years, she helped lead the NSF-funded Massachusetts State Systemic Initiative, PALMS, which inspired the development of curriculum frameworks, assessments, professional development, family involvement, and strategic planning for districts in mathematics and science statewide. As a founding funder and chair of the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy, Noyce has helped formulate and write policy papers on value-added assessment, opportunity to learn in science, and alternate math pathways to college readiness. She also serves on the boards of the Concord Consortium, where she is past chair; TERC; the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications; the Libra Foundation; and the Boston Plan for Excellence. She is the author of the Lexicon series of middle-grade fantasies for children and is a founder of Tumblehome Learning, Inc, which publishes science-based mysteries, biographies, and accompanying kits and activities for young people ages eight through sixteen.

Daniel T. Hickey is an associate professor in the Learning Sciences program at Indiana University in Bloomington, and a research professor with the Indiana University Center for Research on Learning and Technology. He completed his PhD in psychology at Vanderbilt University, where he studied with James Pellegrino and the other members of the Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt. He also completed postdoctoral training at the Center for Performance Assessment at the Educational Testing Service. He studies participatory approaches to assessment, feedback, evaluation, and motivation. He primarily works with technology-supported learning environments including video games, digital networks, and e-learning. He has directed projects in these areas funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the MacArthur Foundation, and has published both practical and theoretical papers in leading journals.