Formative Assessment in the Mathematics’ Classroom: Engaging Teachers and Students

EDC is developing and testing a two-year, intensive professional development model for building middle grades mathematics teachers’ facility with formative assessment.

Using a combination of institutes, ongoing professional learning communities, and Web-based resources, this model attends both to teachers’ knowledge of critical aspects of formative assessment and their implementation of formative assessment in the classroom. Implementation consists of teachers integrating practices associated with critical aspects of formative assessment into mathematics instruction on a daily basis; full implementation, which the project is working towards, requires internalizing a comprehensive understanding of these aspects.

The project has two rounds of professional development: a pilot version with a first cohort of 40 teachers and a revised, field test version with a second cohort of 60 teachers. The audience for this project is middle school math teachers including special education teachers who are responsible for some math instruction, professional development providers, and the research community.