Supporting Teachers Statewide in the Formative Assessment Process- Margaret Heritage

Supporting Teachers Statewide in the Formative Assessment Process

Effective formative assessment practice requires teachers to have a range of knowledge and skills so that they can orchestrate an extraordinary number of complex judgments in the course of a lesson to continuously advance their students’ learning. Drawing from the Formative Assessment for Students and Teachers (FAST) State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards (SCASS) definition of formative assessment (FAST SCASS, 2017), Dr. Heritage considers the formative assessment knowledge and skills, the disciplinary knowledge, and the habits of practice that enable teachers to successfully implement formative assessment in their classrooms. A key challenge for teachers and those who support them is how to ensure that teachers have these requisite knowledge, skills, and habits of practice, so that they can take advantage of what we know can have powerful and beneficial effects on all students’ learning. In this regard, she also discusses the implications for in-service and pre-service educators and the organizations that represent them, and offers some specific recommendations for teachers’ professional learning.

Framing Questions

1. What are the knowledge, skills and habits of practice teachers need to effectively implement formative assessment in their classrooms?
2. Given these requisite skills, knowledge, and habits of practice, what are the implications for those who support teachers to be effective formative assessment practitioners?
3. How is Michigan supporting teachers to develop these skills, knowledge, and habits of practice? Are there areas that need to be/could be strengthened?