Formative assessment is one of the most effective strategies for improving opportunity to learn for all students as teachers transition to the new vision of science teaching and learning. This belief is supported by the research of Black and Wiliam, John Hattie, and others who have shown that formative assessment significantly improves student learning and is one of the most effective ways to close the achievement gap. The science content-focused and research-based approach to formative assessment used in the resources on this site is based upon the seminal recommendation from How People Learn  that "if students' initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp new concepts and information presented in the classroom, or they may learn them for the purposes of a test but revert to their preconceptions." Because science is the discipline in which students learn about the natural world, science teaching and learning presents unique challenges because children begin interacting with the natural world and trying to make sense of phenomena through their daily experiences long before they begin school as well as through school and everyday experiences that occur during their K-12 school years. Furthermore, these ideas are strongly held and resistant to change unless teachers use specifically designed questions and techniques to uncover students’ thinking and design experiences that will help students willingly give up their alternative conceptions in favor of scientific ways of thinking. Our formative assessment work focuses on a metacognitive approach to teaching and learning where students learn to make their ideas visible to themselves as well as their peers and teachers. By using purposefully designed questions that draw out commonly held ideas and help students be more aware of their own thinking, students are more apt to take control of their own learning and monitor their own progress toward a learning goal. That is why we adopt the term, assessment for learning and even assessment as learning, rather than assessment of learning, as we believe the most powerful form of assessment happens during the learning process. The preposition makes a difference!

 What Are Science Educators Saying About the Probes on Twitter?

Join the thousands of our probes and FACTs users on Twitter to learn how the probes and formative assessment classroom techniques (FACTs) are used in K-12 classrooms, professional development and preservice teacher education, and in informal setting. You can follow Page Keeley and her work on Twitter: @CTSKeeley and participate in occasional Twitter Chats with Page and her colleagues.