A Model of Formative Assessment in Science Education - Bronwen Cowie and Beverly Bell

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Assessment in Education:
Principles, Policy & Practice
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A Model of Formative
Assessment in Science
Education
BRONWEN COWIE & BEVERLEY BELL
Published online: 09 Jun 2010.
To cite this article: BRONWEN COWIE & BEVERLEY BELL (1999) A Model of
Formative Assessment in Science Education, Assessment in Education: Principles,
Policy & Practice, 6:1, 101-116, DOI: 10.1080/09695949993026
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Assessm ent in Education, Vol. 6, N o. 1, 1999 101
A M odel of Formative Assessment in

Science Education
B RON W EN C OW IE & B EVER LEY B ELL
School of Education, U niversity of W aikato, P Bag 3105, H am ilton, New Zealand
AB STRA CT This paper reports on the ® ndings of a 2-year research project into the process
of form ative assessm ent in the science classrooms of 10 teachers. Formative assessment is
de® ned as the process used by teachers and students to recognise and respond to student
learning in order to enhance that learning, during the learning. The ® ndings indicate that
the teachers used two kinds of formative assessm ent, planned and interactive. Planned
formative assessment involved the teachers eliciting and interpreting assessm ent information
and then taking action. It tended to be carried out with the whole class. Interactive
formative assessm ent involved the teachers in noticing, recognising and responding, and
tended to be carried out with some individual students or sm all groups. T his paper discusses
these two types of formative assessm ent, how they are related, how they are integral to
teaching and learning processes, and how they are dependent on teachers’ pedagogical
knowledge.
Introduction
One of the purposes of assessment within education is that of inform ing and
improving teaching program mes and students’ on-going learning. Assessment in-
tended to enhance teaching and learning is called formative assessment. The N ew
Zealand M inistry of Education (1993) includes formative assessm ent in its curricu-
lum policy and de® nes it as:
A range of formal and inform al assessment procedures (for exam ple, the
m onitoring of children’ s writing developm ent, anecdotal records, and
observations) undertaken by teachers in the classroom as an integral part of
the norm al teaching and learning process in order to m odify and enhance
learning and understanding. (N ew Zealand, M inistry of Education, 1994,
p. 48)
W ithin the research reported here, form ative assessment was de® ned as:
the process used by teachers and students to recognise and respond to

student learning in order to enhance that learning, during the learning.
(Cowie & Bell, 1996, p. 3)
0969-594X/99/010101-16 Ó 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd

102 B. Cowie & B. Bell
This is sim ilar to other de® nitions (G ipps, 1994 ; Black, 1995 ) in the literature (Bell
& Cowie, 1997).
W hile there has been m uch written on the im portance of form ative assessm ent to
improve learning and standards of achievem ent (Harlen & Jam es, 1996), there has
been little research on the process of form ative assessment (Black, 1995) . This paper
reports research funded by the N ew Zealand M inistry of Education in 1995 ± 96 to
investigate classroom-based assessment, which is reported more fully in Bell &
Cowie (1997). T he main aim of the research was to investigate assessment in years
7± 10 classrooms where the teacher of science was taking into account students’
thinking (Bell, 1993 ) and, in particular, form ative assessment.
The two researchers worked with 10 teachers during the years of the research.
These teachers ranged in teaching experience from 1.5 years to 25 years at the start
of the research. T wo co-educational interm ediates, one girls’ high school and two
co-educational high schools were involved.

There were three strands to the research. O ne strand investigated the views of
assessm ent held by the teachers and some of their students over the 2 year period
of the research. In a second strand, the classroom activities relating to assessm ent in
the classrooms of the 10 teachers were observed. In the third strand, the 10 teachers
and the researchers met on 11 teacher developm ent days for professional develop-
ment on classroom -based assessm ent, to re¯ ect on the data analysis and to discuss
the em erging m odel of form ative assessm ent.
M ultiple data collection methods were used: participant observation in the class-
room s; interviews with the teachers and students; surveys; and the audiotaping of
the teacher developm ent day discussions. In the m ain part of the research, 65
teacher interviews, 73 student interviews and 128 classroom observations were
undertaken. The data presented in this paper are coded; for exam ple, TD 3/95/7.10
indicates that the quotation is from the transcript of the third teacher development
day, held in 1995.
O ne of the key ® ndingsÐ a model to describe and explain the formative assess-
ment processes as carried out by the teachersÐ follows. The current literature on
form ative assessment initially acted as a fram ework to m ake sense of the qualitativ e
data collected. H owever, the model evolved from the initial data analysis as m ore
qualitative data was collected and as the teachers re¯ ected on and took action in
their classroom as a result of the on-going debates in the teacher developm ent days.
A M odel of Form ative Assessment
The teachers within the project undertook two kinds of form ative assessm ent. These
were:
· planned formative assessm ent; and

· interactive form ative assessment.
In the following sections, planned and interactive formative assessm ent are dis-
cussed in turn.
Form ative Assessment 103
F IG . 1. Planned form ative assessm ent.

Planned Form ative Assessment
The process of planned formative assessm ent was characterised by the teachers
eliciting, interpreting and acting on assessment inform ation. The purpose of the
planned form ative assessment determ ined how the inform ation was collected, inter-
preted and acted upon. Hence, these four aspects are interrelated and m utually
determ ining. T hey are represented diagra m matically in Fig. 1.
The planned form ative assessment process was seen by the researchers and
teachers as cyclical or a spiral. For exam ple:
W e decided it was a cycle, and the cycle starts with a student activity of
som e sort, data gathering happens ¼ the teacher needs to be re¯ ecting on
what is happening ¼ the teacher and the students will form ulate the
direction that they’ re going, and then you’ re back to the beginning with a
student activity of som e sort ¼ there is feedback going on ¼ (TD 4/95/
12.6)
Each of the four parts of the process is described in m ore detail.
Purpose
The m ain purpose for which the teachers said they used planned form ative assess-
ment was to obtain inform ation from the whole class about progress in learning the
science as speci® ed in the curriculum . This assessm ent was planned in that the
teacher had arranged to undertake a speci® c activity (for exam ple, a survey or
brainstorm ing) to obtain assessm ent inform ation on which some action would be
taken. The teachers considered the inform ation collected as a part of the planned
form ative assessm ent to be `general’ , `blunt’ and concerning their `big’ purposes. It
gave them inform ation which was valuable in inform ing their interactions with the
class as a whole with respect to `getting through the curriculum’ . This kind of
form ative assessment was planned by the teacher mainly to obtain feedback to
inform her or his teaching. The purpose for doing the assessment strongly in¯ uenced
the other three aspects of the planned form ative assessment process.
Eliciting Information as Part of Planned Formative Assessment
The teachers planned in advance to elicit information on their students’ science

understandings and skills learning, using speci® c assessment tasks. W hile the teach-
ers described their eliciting of planned formative assessm ent inform ation as purpose
driven, their purposes for eliciting inform ation often changed during the unit of
work.
A t the beginning of a unit of work, the teachers frequently planned to assess their
students form atively to inform their planning and teaching during the rest of the
unit. For example, teacher 7 asked her students to write down, in a brainstorm
activity, all they knew about how hot-air balloons worked so that she could ® nd out
what the students already knew about the area of science she was intending to teach.
D uring a unit of work, the teachers planned to elicit form ative assessment
inform ation, using speci® c assessment activities, on the understandings their stu-
dents were constructing during the teaching and learning. The form ative assessment
tended to focus on the extent to which the students had learnt what the teachers
were intending the students to learn. T hey often did this at the beginning of a lesson,
and used the information during the lesson. For exam ple, teacher 3 used quick tests
at the beginning of each lesson during a unit of work to ® nd out what the students
had learnt and rem em bered from the previous lesson.
The teachers also planned to elicit form ative assessment inform ation at the end of
a unit. They used this information in a form ative way to inform their teaching when
they taught the unit again. For example, teacher 7 had taught the hot-air balloon
unit before and was able to anticipate som e of the students’ alternative conceptions
in her initial planning.
The teachers said the strategy they used to gather the information was determined
by the nature of the inform ation they required (and therefore, indirectly, the
purpose). For exam ple, the teachers used strategies such as: asking quick questions
to obtain inform ation on students’ on-going understanding and recall; brainstorm s
to obtain inform ation on the scope and depth of the students’ prior knowledge;
asking the students to generate questions to obtain an indication of what they were
interested in ® nding out; making physical m odels to elicit inform ation which did not
depend on the students’ knowledge of scienti® c vocabulary; and asking students to
record their explanation of how an event occurred to gain inform ation on students’
conceptions.
W ithin planned form ative assessments, the teachers usually planned to use assess-
ment strategies to elicit perm anent evidence of the thinking of each individual
student. For exam ple, the teachers usually asked the students to write something on
paper or to m ake a physical m odel. T his m eant these assessment occasions tended
to be sem i-form al.
Interpreting as Part of Planned Form ative Assessm ent
The second aspect of the teachers’ planned form ative assessm ents was that of
interpreting the information. The purpose of the planned formative assessment was
in¯ uential on the process of interpreting. As the teachers’ planned assessments

tended to have a science curriculum focus, their interpretations were usually science
criterion-referenced. That is, the teachers wanted to know if the students had learnt
and understood the science they intended them to learn. For example, through spot
tests, teacher 3 elicited form ative assessment information which he interpreted as
indicating some of his students not having understood certain ideas on electricity
from the previous lesson.
The teachers’ interpretations of their planned form ative assessm ents also had an
elem ent of norm -referencing in that they were in¯ uenced by their expectations of the
understanding which was likely with students at a particular age or in a particular
year of schooling. For exam ple, when teacher 5 interpreted her students’ under-
standing about the idea of tectonic plates on the earth’ s surface, she took the
concept no further, given they were 11-year-olds.
The teachers indicated that their knowledge bases (Shulm an, 1987 ) were im port-
ant factors in their being able to interpret the inform ation they had collected in their
planned form ative assessment. They indicated that interpreting involved using their
content knowledge, general and content pedagogical knowledge, curriculum knowl-
edge of learners and their students in particular, a knowledge of educational contexts
and a knowledge of educational aim s and goals. The teachers indicated that their
experience of teaching a particular concept added to their pedagogical knowledge
and hence their ability to interpret student thinking when teaching the concept on
a further occasion.
A s part of the interpreting, the teachers felt that they ® ltered out the irrelevant
inform ation, inform ation that was seen to be irrelevant to the purpose of that
particular form ative assessment episode. For exam ple:
The gathering of information ¼ it’ s a sifting activity, isn’ t it. To see if it’ s
relevant to what [is] your goal. (TD 5/96/15.32)
The ability to discrim inate between relevant and irrelevant inform ation and to
recognise the signi® cance of som ething was im portant. Prior teaching experiences
were considered by the teachers to be important in the ability to discrim inate in the
process of form ative assessment. In other words, the teachers considered form ative
assessm ent to be more likely to be undertaken by more experienced teachers, and
later in the teaching year, rather than earlier.
Acting as Part of Planned Formative Assessment
Once the teachers had elicited and interpreted the inform ation they had availab le,
they had the opportunity of taking action to enhance the students’ learning. Action
on the interpreted inform ation is the essential aspect of formative assessm ent that
distinguishes it from continuous summ ative assessm ent. To do this, the teacher
needed to plan to have a ¯ exible program m e and to allow for ways in which she or
he could act in response to the inform ation gathered. It also helped to be able to act
in a variety of ways in response to that inform ation. Hence, the teacher’ s pedagogical
knowledge inform ed the taking of action as part of the process of form ative
assessm ent.
The teachers acted on the assessment inform ation they obtained in three different
waysÐ science-referenced, student-referenced and care-referenced. T hat is, the pur-
pose of their taking action varied and was often broader than their purposes for
eliciting the inform ation, which were m ainly science-based.
(i) Science-referenced ways of acting. One way the teachers acted on the planned
form ative assessm ent inform ation was to mediate the students’ understandings
towards those of scientists by addressing students’ alternative conceptions. For
exam ple, teacher 7 decided on the ® ve quick practical activities she would use once
she had found out the students’ alternative conceptions.
In another form of the science-referenced way of taking action, the teachers acted
on the planned assessm ent inform ation to ensure that the students performed the
task in the manner they had prescribed. The teachers considered which of the tasks
they had selected would m ediate the students’ understanding towards a particular
science concept. They also wanted to ensure the students had comm on experiences.
For exam ple, teacher 7’ s ® ve short practical activities provided the students with
opportunities to gain com mon experiences which could then be discussed in class.
A third way the teachers acted on planned assessm ent information in a science-
referenced way was to indicate what was valued as a learning outcome. For exam ple,
teacher 7 legitim ated the scientist’ s view of density by recording it on the board after
a class discussion.
(ii) Student-referenced ways of acting. The second way of acting on the planned
form ative assessment information was to act in a way that was referenced to the
individual student. In particular, the teachers used student-referenced action that
built on how an individual student’ s science understandings were changing over
tim e. For exam ple, teacher 8 provided students who had ® nished a ray box activity
with an extension activity using two prisms `to produce a rainbow and then com bine
the colours’ . The action was given with reference to these students’ need for further
focused activity and learning.
(iii) Care-referenced ways of acting. The third way the teachers acted on the planned
form ative assessment inform ation was to act in a way so as to sustain and enhance
the quality of interactions and relationships between the students and between
them selves and the students.
In summ ary, the teachers used planned form ative assessm ents and in doing so
planned and undertook the eliciting of information. T hey then interpreted and acted
on that inform ation. In this section, each of these four aspects of planned form ative
assessm ent has been discussed as a separate entity. In the next section, the interac-
tion between these four aspects will be discussed.
F IG . 2. Interactive formative assessment.

The Process of Planned Formative Assessm ent
Three further points about planned form ative assessment can be m ade:
· the tim e taken for the process varied;

· the purposes of eliciting planned formative assessment inform ation could be
different from the purposes of taking action on that elicited inform ation; and
· both the students and the teachers contributed to planned form ative assessment
and in a reciprocal way: when the teacher was taking action, the students were
eliciting information, and when the students were taking action, the teacher was
able to elicit information.
Interactive Form ative Assessm ent
The second form of formative assessm ent was interactive form ative assessm ent.
Interactive form ative assessm ent was that which took place during student± teacher
interactions. It differed from the ® rst form Ð planned form ative assessmentÐ in that
a speci® c assessm ent activity was not planned. The interactive assessment arose out
of a learning activity. H ence, the details of this kind of form ative assessm ent were not
planned, and could not be anticipated. A lthough the teachers often planned or
prepared to carry out interactive form ative assessment, they could not plan for or
predict what exactly they and the students would be doing, or when it would occur.
As interactive form ative assessment occurred during student± teacher interaction, it
had the potential to occur any time students and teachers interacted. T he teachers
and students within the project interacted in whole-class, small-group and one-to-
one situations.
The process of interactive formative assessment involved the teachers noticing,
recognising and responding to student thinking during these interactions and is
represented diagra m m atically in Fig. 2.
Purpose
The m ain purpose for which the teachers said they carried out interactive form ative
assessm ent was to mediate in the learning of individual students with respect to
science, social and personal learning. Hence, they said they formatively assessed a
wider range of learning outcomes than the science and this is in line with The N ew
Zealand Curriculum Fram ework (N ew Zealand M inistry of Education, 1993). T he
teachers’ speci® c purposes of interactive form ative assessm ent em erged in response
to what sense they found the students were m aking. The purposes of the interactive
form ative assessment were an im portant part of noticing, recognising and respond-
ing. Interactive form ative assessment was therefore embedded in and strongly linked
to learning and teaching activities.
The teachers indicated that through their interactive form ative assessm ent they
re® ned their short-term goals for the students’ learning within the fram ework of their
long-term goals. For exam ple, teacher 5 changed her purposes of learning, within a
unit of work on earth sciences, from learning about weathering to learning about
contracting and expanding when she noticed some of the students had scienti® cally
unacceptable conceptions about heating and cooling.

The teachers indicated that their purposes of learning could be delayed. For
exam ple, teacher 7 delayed the learning about separating m ixtures until the students
had learnt about the properties of the substances to be separated. The purpose of
student learning was negotiated between the teacher and the students through
form ative assessment feedback. T eacher 9 described it as linking students into her
agenda. The teachers described interactive form ative assessm ent as teacher- and
student-driven rather than curriculum -driven. They said the focus of their interac-
tive form ative assessment was `® ner tuned’ with `lots of little purposes to support the
major picture or purpose’ .
Noticing as a Part of Interactive Form ative Assessm ent
N oticing was a key part of the interactive form ative assessm ent. Noticing in interac-
tive formative assessment differed from eliciting inform ation in planned form ative
assessm ent in that the inform ation gained was ephem eral, not recorded, and the
noticing was faster than the eliciting. The ephem eral inform ation the teachers gained
was verbal (student comm ents and questions) and non-verbal (how they did practi-
cal activities, how they interacted with others, the tone of discussions and their body
language). This inform ation was about thinking and actions in progress. If the
teachers were not present when the information was noticeable, the information was
rarely availa ble to the teacher at som e later time. The teachers were able to access
some perm anent evidence of the students’ thinking by reading their written work.
Som e student com m ents, questions and actions were relatively transparent in that
what the students said or did im plied a particular way of thinking. For exam ple,
teacher 3 asked his students to connect a light bulb, wires and a dry cell to make the
light bulb glow. By watching the students, he could see how the students used the
wires and thereby gain som e insight into how the students viewed electric current.
However, it m ust be acknowledged that not all the thinking of the students was
accessible to the teacher. Through their interactions with the students, the teachers
were able to notice inform ation about som e but not all of the students. The teachers
noticed different inform ation from different students at different tim es.
The inform ation they noticed was related to the students’ science, social and
personal developm ent (Bell & Cowie, 1997) . The teachers noticed inform ation
about the students’ science learning. D uring practical and written work, the teachers
noticed whether or not the students were perform ing the task according to the
scienti® c procedure, and if they were m aking the intended sense. For exam ple,
teacher 5 noticed that som e of her students did not have a scienti® cally acceptable
concept of heating and cooling; teacher 9 noticed that some students did not
understand the notion of controls; and teacher 7 noticed that som e of her students
did not know about the properties of the substances she had asked them to separate.
The teachers also noticed inform ation about what sense the students were m aking
(whether it fell within their intended learning or not). For exam ple, teacher 7
noticed that som e of her students requested equipm ent to ® lter oil and water to
separate them . Their request gave her inform ation about the understandings these
students were developing from an activity on separating substances. The teachers

also noticed aspects relating to the students’ personal and social developm ent. For
exam ple, teacher 9 noticed when a student began to work m ore co-operatively with
others.
Recognising as Part of Interactive Formative Assessment
The second part of interactive formative assessm ent was that of recognising. T he
teachers comm ented that while they were observing, talking to or listening to a
student they would notice som ething and recognise its signi® cance for the develop-
ment of the student’ s personal, social or science understandings. Recognising m ay
be differentiated from noticing in that it is possible to observe and note what a
student does without appreciating its signi® cance. A t tim es, the teachers only
appreciated the signi® cance after the event. For example, teacher 3 was confused by
how one of his students used the word `fuse’ , seemingly with understanding. It
occurred to the teacher later that the student was using the term `fuse’ in the context
of a bom b fuse, rather than the teacher’ s m eaning of the fuse in a household circuit.
The teachers also said their noticing and recognising was strongly in¯ uenced by
their pedagogical knowledge and experiences from previous teaching. N oticing and
recognising required the teachers to use their prior knowledge of the individual
student, their pedagogical content knowledge and their knowledge of the context.
The teachers discussed how they m ight not notice and recognise the signi® cance
of students’ com ments and actions because they lacked the experience and knowl-
edge. They m entioned that interactive form ative assessm ent was dif® cult for begin-
ning teachers and for experienced teachers with a new class, say at the beginning of
the year (Bell & Cowie, 1997) . The teachers said their awareness of student thinking
(what they noticed and recognised) was often triggered if a student response was
unexpected or incorrect, or if a num ber of students indicated that they held a sim ilar
view.
W iliam (1992 ) identi® ed two issues, disclosure and ® delity, which m ay lim it the
inform ation teachers have to notice and recognise. The disclosure of an assessment
inform ation eliciting strategy is the extent to which it produces evidence of attain-
ment from an individual in the area being assessed. W ithin this project, this
de® nition is broadened to include the extent to which it produces evidence of
students’ non-understanding in the area being assessed. W iliam (1992 ) de® ned
® delity as the extent to which evidence of attainm ent, which has been disclosed, is
observed faithfully. He claim ed that ® delity is undermined if evidence of attainment
is disclosed but not observed. For example, the teacher m ay not hear a small-group
discussion in which the students dem onstrate they understand a concept. Fidelity is
also underm ined if the evidence is observed but interpreted incorrectly, for exam ple
if the teacher did not understand the student’ s thinking, a possibility if there is
insuf® cient comm onality in the teacher’ s and the student’ s thinking. The com pro-
mise to ® delity through a lack of opportunity to observe students’ thinking, and the
inability to interpret students’ thinking, are critical issues in interactive form ative
assessm ent.
To recognise the signi® cance of what is noticed, teachers must be able to interpret
the inform ation they have and to understand its im plications in term s of what sense
the students are m aking. The two parts of interpreting and appreciating im plications
constitute recognising. From a constructivist view of learning, recognising the
signi® cance of what students say and do requires teachers to make `qualitativ e
judgem ents’ (Sadler, 1989) . Sadler (1989 ) claim ed the use of qualitativ e judgement
required a concept of quality appropriate for the task and the ability to judge work
in relation to this. In the case of students’ science learning, teachers m ust under-
stand the science concept (have the science content knowledge) and be able to judge
the students’ comm ents and/or actions in relation to this (have the appropriate
pedagogical content knowledge). H ence, the teachers must be able to m ake science
criterion-referenced judgem ents.
Sadler (1989 ) also argued that qualitativ e judgements are holistic and invoke fuzzy
criteria which are context-dependent rather than pre-determined. In his view, the
salience of particular criteria depends on `what is deem ed to be worth noticing’ at
a particular tim e. W iliam (1992) argued that some form s of understanding cannot
be com pletely encapsulated by a set of pre-determ ined criteria. He claimed that
`construct-referenced’ interpretations are required when assessing holistic and open-
ended activities such as investigations, projects and creative writing, for in these `the
whole is m ore than the sum of the parts’ . Sadler (1989 ) and W iliam (1992 ) both
stated that the criteria required to judge or recognise what students are learning were
em ergent rather than com pletely pre-determ ined. As M ehan (1979 ) noted:
Before the lesson the teacher may have criteria she intends to use to judge
student responses, however, these m ay change during the lesson,
in¯ uenced by events which em erge within the situation; who is answering,
when in the lesson, what has gone before, what the child has done before.
(M ehan, 19 79, p. 112)
Responding as Part of Interactive Formative Assessment
The third part of interactive form ative assessm ent was the teachers responding to
what they had noticed and recognised. The responding by the teachers was sim ilar
to the acting in planned form ative assessm ent except that the tim e-fram e was
differentÐ it was m ore im m ediate. Hence, the teachers’ responses to student learning
were typically care-, student- and science-referenced. A single response might have
one or m ore of these aspects in it.
The care-referenced response was a response related to nurturing the teacher’ s
relationship with the students or the students’ view of science. T he teachers often
indicated they would not wish their response to dam age their relationship with a
student or to dam age the way the student viewed science, and at tim es acted to nurture
these relationships. The student-referenced response was a response related to
enhancing the students’ developm ent, with reference to the students them selves.
These two were often identi® able in the one response. For exam ple, teacher 7 noted
and recognised one student’ s reluctance to accept her advice on how to separate two
substances. He had suggested separating sand and salt with a pair of tweezers.
Knowing he would not accept her word on the practicality and preciseness of this
proposed method, she gave him a pair of tweezers, which he used over two lessons
to ® nd out for himself if his technique `worked’ or not.
The science-referenced response was a response to m ediate a student’ s learning
towards that of a scientist. For example, teacher 5 questioned students and suggested
further activities to get them to engage in thinking about their ideas of heating and
cooling.
O n some occasions, the teachers responded to interactive form ative assessment
inform ation by changing from interacting with a random sam ple of students to acting
with all the students. T his occurred when a student had a particular scienti® cally
unacceptable conception or when a num ber of students displayed sim ilar alternative
conceptions of the science or of the purposes or requirements of the task. The teachers
described this action as being an ef® cient use of their tim e and as enabling them to
provide feedback to all students, including those who m ight be too shy to ask or unable
to form ulate their concern into a question. The interactive form ative assessment
response that they took often involved repeating an explanation or activity which had
been successful with a student or a small group.
A nother response by the teachers was deliberately to elicit inform ation from all the
students. For exam ple, this was observed during a whole-class discussion when teacher
7 responded to the information she had by deliberately eliciting inform ation from all
the students by asking for a show of hands. She described the decision to do this as
spontaneous. In order to respond to interactive formative assessment in this way, the
teachers had to be fam iliar with a num ber of assessment strategies and with the form s
of inform ation they were able to elicit. W hen a teacher m oved from random ly noticing
inform ation from a student in one lesson to eliciting it from all students in the next
lesson, this was considered as a m ove to planned formative assessm ent.
R esponding involves `reciprocity and em pathy’ (Learvitt, 1994 , p. 73) and spon-
taneity and ¯ exibility (Goodfellow, 1996) . It also involves using prior experiences.
Peterson & Clark (1978 ) found that experience provided teachers with m ore
alternatives for action and Jaworski (1994) suggested that experience can im prove
teachers’ ability to decide which alternative is the m ost appropriate in a situation.
W ithin the process of interactive formative assessm ent, the teachers often had to
make quick decisions in circum stances in which they did not have all the necess-
ary inform ation. As these decisions were m ade in context, the teachers were able
to use their knowledge of individual students and the context to help them `® ll in
the m issing bits of inform ation’ (D enscom be, 1995 , p. 177). Jaworski (1994)
claimed that `teacher wisdom ’ rather than intuition or instinct is what a teacher
brings to this m om ent of decision-m aking.
The Process of Interactive Form ative Assessment
Eight points can be m ade about interactive form ative assessment.
· U nlike planned formative assessment, which elicited inform ation mainly on the
students’ science learning, interactive form ative assessment focused on the whole
student, as it enabled the teacher to focus on all three aspects of students’
learningÐ the students’ personal, social and science development (Bell & Cowie,
1997).
· The teachers’ pedagogical knowledge bases (Shulman, 1987 ) were used in all four
aspects of interactive formative assessment.
· The teachers indicated that they were prepared to carry out interactive form ative
assessment in a lesson. They prepared for it by planning to increase the num ber
of interactions between them and their students, and by providing opportunities
for students to approach them . They rehearsed their responses to possible student
alternative conceptions. They also planned to increase their opportunities for
observing students interacting with each other.
· Interactive formative assessment depended on the teachers’ skills of interaction
with the students and the nature of the relationships they had established with the
students.
· The teachers viewed interactive form ative assessm ent as an integral part of teaching
and learning, not separate from it. The responding, as an action, could be viewed
as a part of form ative assessment or a part of teaching from this perspective.
· The degree of awareness of being engaged in the process of interactive form ative
assessment varied am ongst the teachers. The degree of awareness of the teachers
was in¯ uential in the processes of noticing, recognising and responding.
· A nother aspect of interactive form ative assessment was that the process of interac-
tive formative assessm ent was typically `over in a m om ent’ .
· The students were not treated equally, as they were within planned form ative
assessment. T ypically, only som e students were involved in interactive form ative
assessment at any one tim e.
An Overview of the M odel of Form ative Assessm ent
In this section, the two form s of form ative assessment are discussed together. These
two forms, and the links between them , can be represented diagra mm atically, as in
Fig. 3.
.
F IG . 3. A m odel of formative assessment.
In a m eeting in N ovem ber 1996 , the teachers discussed the relationship between
and the interaction of the two kinds of formative assessm ent (for a fuller account, see
Bell & Cowie, 1997) . T hey com mented that the two kinds of form ative assessment
were linked through the purposes of form ative assessm ent (see the dashed line in
Fig. 3); that som e teachers used interactive formative assessment m ore than other
teachers did; and that a teacher would m ove from planned to interactive and back.
The link between the two parts of the m odel was seen to be centred around the
purposes of carrying out formative assessm ent.
The teachers con® rm ed that they changed from planned to interactive form ative
assessm ent by noticing som ething in the course of planned form ative assessm ent.
They m ay have suspected that things m ay not have been alright and wanted to check
things out; they m ay have noticed a student’ s or a group of students’ alternative
conceptions or misconceptions; they m ay have wished to follow up a hunch, or
monitor the learning occurring. T his change was usually in response to focusing
from the class to an individual. They usually switched back from interactive to
planned formative assessment in response to their responsibilit y for the whole class
learning.
The teachers also com m ented that under stress (for exam ple, when im plem enting
a new curriculum , or when ill) they tended to do less of the interactive form ative
assessm ent. In particular, heavy emphases on summ ative assessm ent procedures for
leaving quali® cations (for exam ple, Unit Standards in N ew Zealand) or on review
and m onitoring procedures (of the Education Review Of® ce in New Zealand) were
seen by the teachers as in¯ uencing the amount of interactive form ative assessment
they felt they were able to do.
Discussion and Su mm ary
There are ® ve key features of the m odel (other characteristics of form ative assess-
ment are discussed in Bell & Cowie, 1997) .
T ABLE I. Planned and interactive formative assessment
Planned formative assessment Interactive formative assessment
The parts of the process were eliciting The parts of the process were noticing,
interpreting, acting recognising, responding
Tended to be carried out with all the Tended to be carried out with some individual
students in the class students or small groups
Could occur over an extended time-frame Happened over a short time-frame
Purposes were m ainly science-referenced Purposes were science-, student- and
care-referenced
Responsive to `getting through the Responsive to student learning
curriculum’
What was assessed was mainly science What was assessed was science, personal and
social learning
The assessment information obtained The assessment information obtained was
was product and process product and process but ephem eral
Interpretations were norm-, science- Recognising was science-, norm - and
and student-referenced student-referenced
Actions were science-, student- and Responses were science-, student- and
care-referenced care-referenced
Relied on teachers’ professional knowledge Relied on teachers’ professional knowledge
First, the m odel of form ative assessment developed consisted of two kinds of
form ative assessmentÐ planned and interactive. Planned form ative assessm ent in-
volved eliciting assessment inform ation using planned, speci® c assessm ent activities,
interpreting and acting on the inform ation. It was used m ainly with the whole class.
Interactive form ative assessm ent involved noticing in the context of the learning
activities, recognising and responding. It was used m ainly with individual students
or with small groups. Further similarities and differences are given in Table I. O f
importance was the use of and the switching between the two form s by the teachers
in the course of a unit of work. The m ain distinction between them was the degree
and type of planning carried out by the teachers.
A second signi® cant feature of the model is that formative assessm ent is described
as a com plex, skilled task. The form ative assessm ent carried out by the teachers in
the research reported here (when considering both forms of form ative assessm ent)
was either planned for or prepared for, contextualised, responsive, on-going and
carried out during the learning to improve the learning, and relied on the teacher’ s
pedagogical knowledges (Shulm an, 1987) .
The third key feature of the m odel is the central role given to purpose in both
form s of form ative assessment. The purpose of planned form ative assessment was
perceived as obtaining information from the whole class about progress in learning
the science as speci® ed in the curriculum to inform the teaching. The purpose of
interactive form ative assessment was perceived as m ediating in the learning of
individual students with respect to science, personal and social learning. Purpose
in¯ uenced each of the aspects of planned form ative assessment (eliciting, interpret-
ing and acting) and interactive form ative assessment (noticing, recognising and
responding). The purpose underlying each aspect of one form of form ative assess-
ment could differ. For exam ple, the purpose of eliciting and noticing might not be
the sam e as that behind the acting and responding. The purposes were the link
between teachers switching between planned and interactive assessm ent.
A fourth signi® cant feature of the m odel is the action taken as part of both
planned and interactive form ative assessment. T he action m eans that form ative
assessm ent can be described as an integral part of teaching and learning, and that it
is responsive to students. The teachers in the research m ade the claim that they did
not think they could prom ote learning in science unless they were carrying out
form ative assessm ent (Bell & Cowie, 1997).
The ® fth key feature of the m odel is that the detailed data generated by the
research and underlying the model are a valuable contribution to the existing
literature on formative assessm ent. Knowing about the details of the form ative
assessm ent process raised the aw areness of the 10 teachers about what they do by
way of formative assessment in their classroom s (Bell & Cowie, 1997). T hat is, the
teachers were carrying out formative assessment but were not always aware of
exactly what they were doing that could be called `form ative assessm ent’ . T he
increased awareness enabled the teachers to re¯ ect in new ways on their practice.
The increased awareness was perceived by the teachers to be the main aspect of their
teacher developm ent during the 2 years of the research project (Bell & Cowie,
1997) . The teachers also indicated that eliciting and noticing were easier to do in the
classroom than acting and responding. The feedback obtained to date suggests that
other teachers and researchers are also interested in this clari® cation of the form ative
assessm ent process. The research ® ndings lend them selves to the developm ent of
workshop materials for use in teacher education program m es to develop teachers’
skills of form ative assessm ent, with respect both to knowing about formative assess-
ment and to being able to carry it out in the classroom .
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A Model of Formative Assessment in Science Education - Bronwen Cowie and Beverly Bell

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On: 27 August 2014, At: 00:19

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09695949993026

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A M odel of Formative Assessment in

the process used by teachers and students to recognise and respond to

0969-594X/99/010101-16 Ó 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd

co-educational high schools were involved.

A M odel of Form ative Assessment

· planned formative assessm ent; and

F IG . 1. Planned form ative assessm ent.

Planned Form ative Assessment

Each of the four parts of the process is described in m ore detail.

Eliciting Information as Part of Planned Formative Assessment

The teachers planned in advance to elicit information on their students’ science

Interpreting as Part of Planned Form ative Assessm ent

in¯ uential on the process of interpreting. As the teachers’ planned assessments

Acting as Part of Planned Formative Assessment

F IG . 2. Interactive formative assessment.

The Process of Planned Formative Assessm ent

· the tim e taken for the process varied;

Interactive Form ative Assessm ent

unacceptable conceptions about heating and cooling.

Noticing as a Part of Interactive Form ative Assessm ent

students were developing from an activity on separating substances. The teachers

Recognising as Part of Interactive Formative Assessment

Responding as Part of Interactive Formative Assessment

The Process of Interactive Form ative Assessment

Eight points can be m ade about interactive form ative assessment.

An Overview of the M odel of Form ative Assessm ent

F IG . 3. A m odel of formative assessment.

Discussion and Su mm ary

T ABLE I. Planned and interactive formative assessment

Planned formative assessment Interactive formative assessment

teaching, A merican E ducational Research Journal , 15, pp. 555± 566.

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