Tale of two science teachers’ formative assessment practices in a similar school environment

The school environment is a complex environment and can be defined using the Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1995). This theory explains how a person’s development is influenced by the various subsystems and the relationships that a person forms with each of the multi-layered environment. The microsystem is the environment closest to the person and one in which he/she has direct contact with. Thus, the microsystem environment has the greatest influence and impact on individuals’ development and actions. The microsystem consists of entities which are other individuals and physical infrastructures. These entities also tend to form bidirectional relationships with the individual. Bidirectional relationships are dual way relationships where how an individual interacts with the entities in his/her microsystem would correspond with how these entities respond to that individual.

The next subsystem is the mesosystem. The mesosystem of an individual is the subsystem that shows how the various entities in a person’s microsystem interact with each other. This is because the entities in the microsystem of an individual do not behave independently but are interconnected. As an example, both the students and the school principal exist in the teachers’ microsystem environment but these two entities (students and school principal) are interconnected which means that the students and school principal can interact with each other with or without the presence of the teacher. The last two outer layers on an individual’s environment is the exosystem and macrosystem, respectively, where in these subsystems the individual does not participate actively but decisions made in these systems may have an effect on them. Therefore, the Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1995) allows for the interactions between the individual and each of his/her subsystem to be studied. Since the microsystem has the most influence on an individual’s actions, therefore the microsystem of the teacher must be highlighted when investigating the role of school environment in influencing teachers’ formative assessment practices. In this context, the teacher’s microsystem or school environment would include the student composition (i.e. class sizes and student ability), school management (i.e. school principal), peers (i.e. supportive and collaborative), and facilities and resources available (i.e. technology, materials and time).

It is shown that environment is a very complex concept and it influences individual’s behaviour (Martin & Mullis, 2013). Thus, we postulate that school environment plays an instrumental role on how teachers might conduct their formative assessment strategies in their classrooms. Even though formative assessment is shown to be effective in enhancing students’ learning outcomes and ultimately achievement, teachers’ implementation of formative assessment in the classroom is still sluggish (Brown, Kennedy, Fok, Chan & Yu, 2009; Yin, et. al., 2014). This is because the implementation of effective formative assessment practices would require teachers to develop new classroom strategies and relationships with their students (Wiliam & Thompson, 2007). Teachers must shift their roles from knowledge providers to facilitators and learn to create high quality learner-centred activities where knowledge is socially and collaboratively constructed through group work (Cizek, 2010). Teachers must learn to provide immediate and constructive feedback and evaluation on learning and this should be done in a nonthreatening manner (McMillan & Hearn, 2008). In addition, teachers must activate their students to become instructional resources for each other and provide ample opportunities for them to evaluate their own and others’ learning (Spiller, 2012).

How does school environment influence teachers’ formative assessment practices? If a teacher handles a small class size, the teacher and students are bestowed with more opportunities to interact with each other and subject matter and this spurs the implementation of formative assessment strategies because it enables the teacher to elicit more meaningful information about students’ learning (Blatchford, Bassett & Brown, 2011). When teachers are able to elicit meaningful information about students’ learning, they will be able to provide more tailor-made and constructive feedback. This action can tremendously help students with their learning. Teachers have commented that if they handled large class sizes, they are not motivated to implement formative assessment strategies because it require additional resources and often feel overwhelm to provide subjective judgement on students’ ephemeral learning moments (Blanchand, 2008; Brown, et al., 2009; Pecek et al., 2008). It shows that a simple factor like class size can have an impact on whether teachers will be motivated to implement formative assessment strategies in their classrooms. Similarly, teachers who teach low ability students may be reluctant to deploy formative assessment strategies because this process involves challenging assessment tasks that requires time and effort for students to respond to these activities (Brown et al., 2009). This is a reality for many teachers, more so, for teachers working in high stake external examination environment where there is an enormous curriculum to cover and to prepare students for examinations.

Teachers, who work in schools that house ‘state-of-the-art’ technology, can use these technologies to enhance their assessment practices. For example, the presence of computers with Wi-Fi connection provide teachers with a rich source of information to create activities for students such as searching for information by themselves. This practice opens up opportunities for their students to take charge of their own learning; a pivotal strategy for formative assessment (Stiggins & Chappuis, 2006; Swaffield, 2011). Teachers can also provide immediate feedback through e-learning platforms such as through blogs and on-line quizzes. Teachers with easy access to these facilities in their environment are inclined to embed formative assessment strategies in their daily lessons. On the other hand, lack of these resources in teachers’ working environment limits the possibilities for teachers to explore these formative assessment strategies in their classrooms.

Social relationships that teachers encounter in their working environment can also influence teachers’ desire to practice formative assessment strategies with their students. Peers and school principals can provide supportive and collaborative environments as teachers develop their assessment skills on a personal and professional level (Smith, 2011; Smith & Engelsen, 2012; Stiggins & DuFour, 2009). Peers provide support and scaffold teachers’ formative assessment practices as teachers work together and have opportunities to witness how their colleagues tackle difficult situations in implementation of formative assessment and how they overcome these obstacles (Forte & Flores, 2013). In contrast, school environment where there is lack of support from peers; teachers are often compelled to work in insolation and are often denied of road maps on how to improve their assessment practices. Similarly, working under the leadership of dynamic and knowledgeable school principals who are agenda setters, knowledge brokers (support teachers pursue for learning about assessment) and motivators for teachers to acquire knowledge and skills on formative assessment may propel teachers to practice formative assessment strategies in their classrooms (Black et al., 2004; Printy, 2008).

The review above acknowledges that the entities within the microsystem layer of teachers’ school environment have great influence and impact on whether teachers are motivated or discouraged to implement formative assessment strategies into their daily classroom activities. In this paper, there is an interest to find out if two teachers with very similar professional background and teaching in similar school environment, would their formative assessment practices lie closer along this formative assessment practice continuum?