| Assessment conversations take place regularly around examples of student work. They are part of a teacher's assessment, or students' self-assessment, of authentic learning products completed in the course of classroom activities. These interactions take on many forms in the classroom: talking about expectations, modeling desired results, asking for revisions, elaborating on responses, scaffolding tasks, and providing written or oral feedback are among the most common examples of assessment conversations in which teachers and students engage every day.;This dissertation focuses on using formal and informal assessment conversations as opportunities to promote teacher and student learning. It offers three separate multiple-site comparative case studies of teachers at work in two Chicago public high schools. These teachers are actively attempting to change their own instruction within an existing school-within-a-school research project, the Mathematics-Science-Technology Academy (MSTA).;The three resulting cases are not cases of individual teachers; rather, they are composites of common assessment challenges seen in the MSTA teachers' practice. These teachers' assessment challenges are: (a) deciding what they want or need to assess, (b) providing sufficient and appropriate opportunities for assessment of student learning, and (c) learning to use new techniques for valid assessment. This research uncovers and explores the complexity within each challenge, and suggests recommendations to promote and study increased teacher and student learning.;Data about assessment conversations and learning were collected with field observations, interviews, surveys, and actual artifacts of teacher and student work. The analysis of teacher learning concentrates on how existing pedagogy interacts or changes as teachers try new assessment tools and strategies with students, paying particular attention to the influence of the teaching context. Student learning is also studied within a rich context: the diverse, urban classrooms in which the literacy and language demands of new inquiry-based curricula are a particular challenge for many students.;This study contributes to the goals of our immediate research project, the MSTA, by helping specific teachers develop their pedagogical knowledge in the course of their daily practice. It also informs the larger educational community by making a contribution towards our evolving understanding of the interactions between classroom assessment and learning. |
