Teachers’ use of classroom assessment techniques in primary mathematics education—an explorative study with six Chinese teachers

Abstract

Background: This paper reports on the use of classroom assessment techniques (CATs) by primary school mathematics teachers in China. CATs are short, focused assessment activities that can reveal students' understanding of specific mathematical subjects. The study involved six female third-grade mathematics teachers from Nanjing, China. The focus was on assessing division. Data were collected by teacher interviews, feedback forms and final reports, lesson observations, and student work. Results: The study revealed that the teachers could easily include CATs in their daily practice. By conducting the CATs, the teachers got new information about their students' learning. Most teachers liked using the CATs, especially those with the red/green cards, which is a whole-classroom immediate response format, providing quick information of the students' learning. The teachers also found the CATs feasible to conduct and helpful to engage their students during the lesson. However, no evidence was found that they used the information gained from the CATs for adapting their instruction to meet the students' needs in subsequent lessons. In fact, the teachers only used the teacher guide of the CATs to adapt their instruction beforehand. The CATs, instead of being implemented as assessment activities, were often included as extra exercises in the pre-arranged lesson plans of the teachers. If necessary, the teachers provided their students with instant help in order to assist them to get the correct answers.

Problematizing teaching and learning mathematics as “given” in STEM education

“…At the same time, we should point out that these publications from 2016 to 2018 seem to reflect a trend, over these three years, of moving toward issues that can go beyond mathematics itself, as what was noted before (Li 2018b). Specifically, for these three articles published in 2016, they are all about mathematics education at either elementary school (Ding 2016;Zhao et al 2016) or university levels (Schoenfeld et al 2016). Out of the six published in 2017, three are on mathematics education (Hagman et al 2017;Keller et al 2017;Ulrich and Wilkins 2017) and the other three on either teacher professional development (Borko et al 2017;Jacobs et al 2017) or connection with engineering (Jehopio and Wesonga 2017).…”

Insights Chinese Primary Mathematics Teachers Gained into their Students’ Learning from Using Classroom Assessment Techniques

“…Furthermore, examining students' responses and worksheets could be included in order to triangulate teachers' reported insights. Another limitation of our study is that the CATs used in the context of Chinese primary mathematics education so far, including the pilot study [39], were designed based on one particular textbook series and only involved teachers from the city of Nanjing. Whether Chinese primary teachers who use different mathematics textbook series or who are from different regions can get new insights from implementing CATs remains unclear.…”

“…Specifically, as a sequel to the studies carried out in the Netherlands [19] in which classroom assessment techniques (CATs) for primary mathematics education were developed and teachers were supported in using CATs, we investigated the use of CATs in China. Six third-grade mathematics teachers of two primary schools in Nanjing, China, participated in a pilot study [39]. The focus of this pilot study was on assessing the topic of division, in particular three-digit numbers divided by a one-digit number.…”

Which Perceptions Do Primary School Children Have about Programming?

“…There exists a wide range of formative classroom assessment techniques that serve the purpose of probing students' thinking and evoking information about their knowledge, understanding and attitudes. It should be noted that these forms of diagnostic assessment should not be threatening for the students and are considered an assessment for learning in contrast to an assessment of learning [54]. What sounds trivial seems to be difficult for many teachersthey usually listen for the "correct" answer rather than what they can learn about the students' thinking [18].…”