The Study Of What Teacher Know And How They Use Formative Assessment

As a kind of classroom assessment, formative assessment has attracted more and more attention in recent years. Despite the proliferation of related research, but as for teaching, there still has some misunderstandings in comprehension and implementation. Therefore, reveal teachers’ understanding and application of formative assessment and explore whether it fits into the relevant characteristics of formative assessment, which is of great significance to teachers’correct understanding and proper using of formative assessment.In order to explore teachers’ understanding and practice of formative assessment, this paper will focus on the following five aspects, the teaching objectives, assessment design, formative feedback, students participate in the assessment, and dynamic the use of assessment results.By respectively selecting the novice teacher L and F, as well as the expert teacher M and J as the research objects. Based on the analytical framework form the five aspects mentioned before, and through the teacher interviews, this study found that the teachers both have some common characteristics and individual differences in the understanding and applying of formative assessment.First of all, the teachers’practice in assessment design and the use of assessment results is more fit into the requirements of formative assessment. In order to improve the efficiency of classroom assessment, the teachers can respond to different situations accordingly. But the teachers behavior mostly stay at the experience level, they lack the necessary support in teaching design. At the same time, there is large time span in using assessment result, the teachers can not only be able to improve classroom teaching at present, but also adjust their teaching accordingly in a longer time.Second, the teachers’understanding and practice in the aspects of feedback and students’ participation in the assessment is not comprehensive. The teachers can integrate both the supportive and the specific features of the feedback, but the "nonevaluative" property is less prominent, because their practice relatively single. Although the teachers can organize students participate in the assessment, they ignore the students’ cognitive development in their perceptions, which reveals they lack the constructivist perspective.Finally, the teachers have some deficiency in the presentation of teaching objectives. They tend to consider its disadvantages over its rationalities, and they do not have a tendency to change this situation.Analyzing their ideological bias, it is not hard to see that the teachers have some deficiencies in building students subjectivity, they are concern about the students’ ability of self-directed learning. Through the changing of teachers’ outlooks on students and their learning views, as well as the improving of teachers’ identity on formative assessment, we can improve the formative assessment in teaching practice.