Using ICT to develop and support formative assessment practices in science

The Centre's staff has worked with colleagues to explore the extent to which teachers and teacher trainees can be supported through ICT in the development of formative assessment practices.
The Centre has constructed a virtual repository comprising the teaching and learning sequences within the Assessing Progress in science materials (Russell and McGuigan). Trainee teachers (Hope University College) and practising teachers (Liverpool LEA) were encouraged to engage in some formative assessment of childrenís science understanding using the hard copy materials or the sequences on the web site.

As part of the process, teachers were encouraged:

• to identify illustrative examples of children's understanding;
• to consider the criteria within the level sequences and make a judgement about the quality of understanding revealed in the illustrative example.

The Centre's staff helped participating teachers upload the collected work of children in digital form on to the learning repository. This process increased teachers' ICT skills in a way relevant to their professional practice.

The uploaded examples have the potential to further inform teachersí judgements of childrenís science understanding. It is intended that the repository will grow as the numbers of examples increases. Increasingly teachers will be encouraged to offer their own assessment activities and add teaching and learning strategies relevant to particular understandings. Teachersí contributions to the development of the system can be used to support formative assessment practices more widely. Key principles underpinning the model are that the accumulated wisdom of teachers can inform the assessment system and that such involvement is empowering and motivating for teachers.

As part of this formative science project, CRIPSAT carried out a small-scale investigation for the TTA into the ICT skills of initial teacher trainees in order to assess teachers' ICT training needs and impact of using the virtual repository.

Final Report Small scale research and development awards TTA Project No 14

Using ICT to develop and support formative assessment practices in science.