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Formative conceptions of assessment:trainee teachers’ thinking aboutassessment issues in English secondaryschoolsKeith S. Taber a , Fran Riga a , Sue Brindley a , Mark Winterbottoma , John Finney a & Linda G. Fisher aa Faculty of Education , University of Cambridge , Cambridge , UKPublished online: 20 May 2011.

To cite this article: Keith S. Taber , Fran Riga , Sue Brindley , Mark Winterbottom , John Finney& Linda G. Fisher (2011) Formative conceptions of assessment: trainee teachers’ thinking aboutassessment issues in English secondary schools, Teacher Development: An international journal ofteachers' professional development, 15:2, 171-186, DOI: 10.1080/13664530.2011.571500

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Teacher DevelopmentVol. 15, No. 2, May 2011, 171–186

ISSN 1366-4530 print/ISSN 1747-5120 online© 2011 Teacher DevelopmentDOI: 10.1080/13664530.2011.571500http://www.informaworld.com

Formative conceptions of assessment: trainee teachers’ thinking about assessment issues in English secondary schools

Keith S. Taber*, Fran Riga, Sue Brindley, Mark Winterbottom, John Finney and Linda G. Fisher

Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UKTaylor and FrancisRTDE_A_571500.sgm(Received 7 January 2010; final version received 13 February 2011)10.1080/13664530.2011.571500Teacher Development1366-4530 (print)/1747-5120 (online)Original Article2011Taylor & Francis152000000May 2011Dr [email protected]

This paper explores the developing thinking about assessment of graduate traineespreparing for secondary teaching in England. For some years teachers in Englishschools have worked in a context where the outcomes of formal testing have beenused to judge school and teacher performance as well as student achievement.Research evidence that formative modes of assessment contribute more to studentlearning has in recent years led to strong recommendations that most classroomassessment should be ‘Assessment for Learning’ (AfL). In reality the neworthodoxy of AfL is being championed in a context where high-stakes testingretains its perceived role in ensuring ‘accountability’. Interviews with a sample oftrainee teachers at an early stage of preparation for teaching suggest that theirpreconceptions about the nature and purpose of assessment, and theirinterpretations of classroom observations on school placement, offer a confusedand complex basis for adopting recommended assessment practices in their ownteaching.

Keywords: classroom assessment; initial teacher education; teacher learning;teacher conceptions; constructivism and teacher learning

Introduction

This paper discusses an exploratory interview study undertaken with trainee teachersin England, designed to investigate their developing understandings of the purposes,nature and forms of assessment used in secondary education. As we will discussbelow, our specific interest derives from work in teacher education, as an understand-ing of trainee teachers’ developing thinking can inform work supporting traineesgoing through this learning process.

Assessment in schools – a problematic issue for new teachers

Our starting point for the present study was a concern that the learning about schoolassessment expected of new entrants to the teaching profession was particularly chal-lenging, given that (i) new teachers entering the profession bring their own existingconceptions of teaching and learning, and that these inevitably influence their inter-pretation of what they are taught during initial teacher education; and (ii) the processof moving from a layperson’s understanding to a practitioner’s understanding is more

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

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172 K.S. Taber et al.

difficult where the concept area itself is contested and confused (Harlen and James1997; MacRuaire and Harford 2008).

New entrants bring with them their own experiences and understandings of schoolassessment procedures, and enter a profession where in recent years a ‘new ortho-doxy’ has developed for discussing assessment (Black and Wiliam 1998a, 1998b,2003; Shepard 2000; Ofsted 2003; Qualifications and Curriculum Authority [QCA]2003; Gardner 2006) – at least in terms of official guidance, schools’ policies, schoolinspection foci, etc. Yet despite the existence of this ‘orthodoxy’ – the apparentwidespread support for adopting regular on-going formative assessment (James,forthcoming) – actual practice in schools may not always clearly match rhetoric, andis subject to tensions (James and Pedder 2006; Marshall and Drummond 2006;Winterbottom et al. 2008b).

Trainee teachers being inducted into the profession face tensions in professionalpractice that derive from influences that we will characterise as recommendations andguidance on good practice; institutional structures and expectations; and ‘custom andpractice’. A new teacher not only has to make sense of the nomenclature of schoolassessment (‘formative’, ‘assessment for learning’, etc.), but to understand both howdifferent purposes and modes of assessment are operationalised within professionalcontexts, and the extent to which this practice matches the ideals of ‘good practice’that are recommended.

Good practice

In recent years there has been significant attention given to the nature of assessment,and in particular there has been considerable advice for teachers on the nature of goodclassroom practice, deriving both from the academic community (Gardner 2006;Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick 2006) and from official guidance (Department for Educa-tion and Employment 1997; Key Stage 3 National Strategy 2002, 2003; Ofsted 2003;QCA 2003). This ‘new orthodoxy’ is often labelled the ‘assessment for learning’(AfL) ‘movement’, with its mantra of assessment for learning rather than assessmentof learning (Winter 2003; Wiliam et al. 2004; Harlen 2006). AfL has been understoodin various ways, but has recently been defined in a position paper agreed at the ThirdInternational Conference on Assessment for Learning:

Assessment for Learning is part of everyday practice by students, teachers and peers thatseeks, reflects upon and responds to information from dialogue, demonstration andobservation in ways that enhance ongoing learning. (Klenowski 2009, 264)

The new orthodoxy focuses on the importance of (formative) assessment as a meansof gathering information to inform teaching (Black and Wiliam 1998a, 7), and toinform the learner about their progress, and about suitable targets for future learning:

The core of the activity of formative assessment lies in the sequence of two actions. Thefirst is the perception by the learner of a gap between a desired goal and his or her presentstate (of knowledge, and/or understanding, and/or skill). The second is the action takenby the learner to close that gap in order to attain the desired goal.

(Black and Wiliam 1998a, 20)

The engagement of students in the assessment process in this way – encouragingthem to take a metacognitive approach to school learning, as well as a focus on the

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Teacher Development 173

specific learning objectives (through peer- and self-assessment) – is something we aseducators very much support. However, we do have doubts about the viability of suchorthodoxy as the main focus on assessment within the institutional context in whichteachers in England work, due to the high degree of accountability in the Englishschool system (Darling-Hammond 1994; Shepard 2000; Wiliam et al. 2004), largelyjudged through high-stakes summative testing.

New entrants to teaching following initial teacher education (ITE) routes basedin partnerships between schools and higher education institutions will be introducedto the ideas underpinning scholarly recommendations and government adviceduring the faculty-based aspects of their courses. These courses will consider thedifferent modes of assessment that may be used to meet various purposes (asexplored in our findings section below). For those following Post-Graduate (QualityAssurance Agency for Higher Education 2001) ITE courses (such as the onefollowed by the participants in the present study), there will be an expectation ofcritical engagement with both the ideas and the research basis for the AfL move-ment (Taber 2010b).

Institutional structures and expectations

Despite the ‘new orthodoxy’ with its focus on formative modes of assessment thatinform further learning, new entrants to teaching will find that the institutional contextof teaching in English secondary schools puts considerable weight on formal assess-ment of students (Goldstein 2001). Pupils undergo regular testing, when they will beexpected to have progressed up the levels ‘ladder’ (Grevatt, Gilbert, and Newberry2007). They will sit high-status examinations, possibly in 10 or more subjects, at age16 (and increasingly earlier) that will determine their chances of enrolling in advancedpost-compulsory education.

The National Curriculum ‘levels’ (QCA 2004) assigned in school tests oftendetermine teaching ‘sets’, which will determine the rate and the conceptual level ofteaching experienced, and may directly limit the final grades possible (Wiliam andBartholomew 2004). Many secondary schools begin setting students into class groupsbased on ‘ability’ (i.e. actually attainment) from the first year of secondary educationdespite an active debate about the relative merits and demerits of such settingprocesses (Harlen and Malcolm 1999; Ireson and Hallam 1999; Wiliam andBartholomew 2004).

Not only are test outcomes high-stakes for learners, but teachers and schools are –in part – judged by the examination results of their students (Goldstein 2001). In manyEnglish secondary schools, therefore, it is normal for students to be given regularformal internal tests that mimic the style and questions of the high-status tests andexaminations.

We are not suggesting here that such regular written tests cannot be or even arenot often used for formative assessment purposes: but rather that the most obviousforms of classroom assessment in some subjects in many English schools are regularwritten tests, accompanied by the recording of results (percentage scores, nationalcurriculum levels, estimated examination grades) for reporting and accountabilitypurposes. We do feel that this emphasis produces a tension, as it seems to privilegeone particular mode of assessment, and one that certainly has the ‘flavour’ of summa-tive examinations, over the on-going informal formative assessment that is an integralpart of a teacher’s everyday classroom work.

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‘Custom and practice’

It is well recognised that in a context such as teaching, changes to professional prac-tice may be slow, and that, indeed, teachers may be effective at restricting or slowingchanges that they do not feel ownership of and commitment to (Briscoe 1991;Harrison 2005; James and Pedder 2006). The complexity of teaching as an activity,and the perceived risks of major changes in practice, can lead to reluctance to discardfamiliar approaches that are perceived as ‘working’ – or at least allowing practitionersto cope with their workload. Change may therefore be avoided, or existing practicesmay be changed minimally (whilst perhaps adopting the language of the intendedchange), or intended innovations may become hybridised with existing practice togive an acceptable compromise (one the teacher is prepared to work with, and whichmanagement considers looks sufficiently like the policy adopted). It is this set ofconsiderations that leads us to conjecture that trainee teachers may well find particulardifficulties in making sense of their learning about assessment during their initialteacher education, and so provided the basis for our decision to explore this issue inour own professional context.

The research context

The authors of this paper work in an English university that offers a one-year initialteacher education programme (the Post-Graduate Certificate in Education, PGCE) forgraduates in partnership with schools in our region. Our secondary-phase course looksto train teachers for teaching across most curriculum subjects, and our partnershipconsists of a spread of schools working with students of age ranges 11–16, 11–18, 13–18 and 16–19. These institutions are based in several English counties, and servevaried local demographics.

This particular route into teaching allows well-qualified graduates to undertake 36weeks of education and training, two thirds of which is spent on placement in partnerschools. The pattern of the year allows periods of ‘block placement’ in school, andperiods where time is split between school and faculty. This type of course is intendedto go well beyond a model of providing a mixture of educational theory (in faculty)and opportunities for practice (in schools); and is seen as a form of supported profes-sional apprenticeship, where working alongside experienced practitioners as part of aschool teaching department is enhanced by being juxtaposed and interspersed withperiods for critical engagement and reflection on practice, academic study, andresearch within a university context.

Trainees are inducted into teaching in schools, moving from observing, to helping,to leading parts of lessons and team teaching, to taking responsibility for planning,teaching and assessing pupils in whole lessons and eventually extended sequences oflessons. Trainees take on an increasing teaching load, but this usually peaks at abouthalf a teacher’s load to ensure sufficient time for planning, self-evaluation and reflec-tion upon the placement experiences. The university assignments which are assessedfor the academic award are designed to help facilitate such reflection: they mustdemonstrate high levels of scholarship and reference to the research literature (Taber2007), integrated with reflections upon placement experiences and evidence collectedfrom the trainees’ own lessons (Taber 2010b). In such a programme, trainees will –over a relatively short period of time – be introduced to principles of assessment,relevant research, official government guidance on good practice, school and depart-mental policies, and the actual assessment practices of current practitioners.

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Monitoring and assessment of students’ learning and progress is a major aspect ofthe competencies that learners are expected to develop during the training year inorder to meet the Qualified Teacher Status standards (Training and DevelopmentAgency for Schools 2007). Ideally, assessment activities are a key focus of planning,and are an integral part of the teaching cycle (Black and Wiliam 1998a, 1998b; James2006; Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick 2006). However in an ITE context, this is typicallyless of a key focus in the first term than it is as the year progresses since it is necessaryfor new teachers to build up their skills. The initial foci tend to be on mastering subject(content and pedagogical) knowledge to support teaching, developing suitable teach-ing presentations and activities to teach the material at the required level for a class,and managing the classroom in an orderly and effective way. In addition, teaching inthe first term develops from small inputs or isolated lessons, towards teaching one ortwo classes over a short series of lessons and this relatively limited contact time inschool during the first term does not provide opportunities for the trainees to get toknow the learners as well as they are able to in subsequent terms.

The present study

This provides the context in which the Secondary PGCE teaching team decided to setup a study into trainee teachers’ understanding of, and developing thinking about,assessment issues during their ITE course. As a starting point for this research we setup an initial small-scale interview study to gain some insight into how these traineeteachers were making sense of assessment concepts and practices.

We decided that the interviews should be undertaken between the two substantiveteaching placements (i.e. at the end of the first term, or very early in the second term).At this point all trainees would have experienced faculty teaching about assessmentissues, and have spent time working in a placement school, firstly on a two-days-a-week basis, then during a four-week block of time in school, offering opportunities forschool-based observation and some limited teaching experience. A semi-structuredinterview (Kvale 1996; Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2000) was selected as the mostappropriate technique to collect data, allowing flexibility within a general ‘agenda’.An interview guide was prepared covering purposes and types of assessment, and train-ees’ observations and experiences of assessment in the classroom (see Appendix 1).

The cohort for the 2005–06 academic year (i.e. September 2005–July 2006)comprised 338 trainees preparing for secondary teaching. For the purposes of thisexploratory study (Biddle and Anderson 1986), we invited a convenience sample toparticipate. Course lecturers were asked to nominate trainees who they felt would becomfortable in an interview context. Seventeen trainees were interviewed. The inter-views were organised and carried out by two researchers who had successfullycompleted doctoral research training, and who had no substantive involvement in theITE programme. Ethical guidelines for obtaining informed consent and for undertak-ing the interviews were followed (British Educational Research Association 2004).

The first four interviews were initially considered as a pilot to test out the suitabil-ity of the basic interview guide. As the guide was considered to provide a sound basisfor the study, and no substantive changes were made to procedures following thispilot, the pilot interviews (En1, Ph1, ML1, Ma1 in Table 1) were included in the dataset to be analysed. The interviews were audio recorded. One of the interviewsinvolved a pair of trainees, and it was consequently decided not to repeat this (as theindividuals tended not to each respond to all questions). One of the pilot interviews

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resulted in a recording that was indistinct in places. Aside from these qualifications, itwas possible to transcribe almost complete responses for all the interviews. Transcrip-tion was undertaken by one of the researchers (the second author). The variety ofsubject specialisms offers a sample diverse in terms of degree subject (see Table 1).Two thirds of the interviewees were female which reflects the cohort (of whom 228were female) as a whole.

The transcribed interviews were analysed using an iterative process common inqualitative enquiry (Hess-Biber and Leavy 2006; Bryant and Charmaz 2007), anddrawing upon the approach used in grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin 1998; Taber2000). We brought to this analysis the conceptual framework outlined above; that is,we assumed that trainees’ thinking would be influenced by:

(i) their prior conceptions based on experience as a student;(ii) their learning about recommendations and guidance on good practice;(iii) their observations of current practice.

Although we therefore brought ‘theoretical sensitivity’ (Baptiste 2001) to the study,we had no firm preconceptions about how our graduate trainees would make sense ofthis complex, nuanced and contended aspect of professional practice. The analysistherefore started with open coding of the transcripts, using descriptive codes basedupon the interviewees’ own words, which were then used to construct a set of catego-ries that seemed to organise and represent the data in an effective but authentic way(Strauss and Corbin 1998; Taber 2000). The final set of categories are discussed below,supported by direct quotations from the interview transcripts. Since the data set wasrelatively small we focus on describing the spectrum of ideas and views expressed,rather than attempting to summarise the frequency of each idea that was stated.

Findings

The trainees’ responses appeared to fall broadly into four areas: (i) the nature andpurpose(s) of assessment, (ii) assessment policies, (iii) the forms of assessmentencountered in practice, and (iv) desirable assessment practice.

Nature and purposes of assessment

Assessment as inquiry

The trainee teachers primarily saw assessment as having a summative function, almostall considering that assessment is a means of inquiring into the student’s present state

Table 1. Distribution of trainee subject specialisms.

Trainee subject specialism Interviewee Gender

Biology Bi1 1FEnglish En1 1FPhysics Ph1, Ph2, Ph3, Ph4 3M, 1FMathematics Ma1, Ma2, Ma3, Ma4, Ma5 3F, 2MModern languages ML1, ML2, ML3, ML4 4FMusic Mu1, Mu2 2F

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of knowledge. Assessment was recognised as a way to gauge and monitor students’progress (Bi1, ML2, Ma2, Ma5) ‘throughout their programme as well as at the end’(Ma5). An English specialist went so far as to declare that all ‘assessment, whetherrightly or wrongly, is driven by summative assessment’ (En1).

In addition, trainees felt that assessment was an effective means of enquiring intoand examining one’s own teaching practice (Bi1, Ph2, Ph4). This could be done intwo ways: firstly, by ‘establishing where you are within what you are doing’ (Ph4),and secondly, by reviewing/critiquing one’s own teaching to find out ‘how well youare teaching them’ (Ph2, Ma2).

Assessment as measurement

The majority of trainees seemed to have some sort of image of assessment as a meansof measurement of how much students know (e.g. Mu1, En1) – several used languagethat reinforced the idea of quantifying learning (ML1, ML4, En1) – usually comparedto a set of targets and objectives (En1, ML1, ML4, Ma5).

Assessment informing decision making

Trainees thought that assessments should be used ‘as a way of helping students get theeducation that’s appropriate for them’ (Ma4), as well as ‘finding out where childrenare so that you can move them forward’ (Ma3, En1). This was about practitioners‘making a judgement about what students can achieve’ (Mu1), and then makingdecisions about what action should be taken in the best interests of the student.

Assessment for external agencies

In talking about their views of assessment, trainees seemed to be very aware of theinfluence of external stakeholders, such as parents, the school, local authorities, andsociety in general, on assessment practices. The notion of accountability was not onlyevident, but uppermost, in several trainees’ minds: with assessment outcomes being‘used to inform the general public about how well the school is doing’ (Ma5) andensuring ‘that schools and teachers are doing their job properly’ (Ma4). Traineesindicated that they were aware of pressure on schools and teachers, which, they felt,influenced the way assessments were conducted – and used – in schools.

Assessment for motivation

A modern languages specialist pointed out that assessment could also ‘be a motivationfor pupils’ as ‘some pupils are strongly motivated by results’ (ML4), a notion echoedby several other trainees. Trainees quoted cases where students did not display muchinterest in written comments about a piece of work or test, but became highlymotivated when they saw their grade.

Assessment as support for learning

Notably very few trainees suggested that one of the primary purposes of assessmentcould be to support learning. A modern languages specialist who saw assessment

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‘as part of learning’ because it served ‘as guidance’ for students ‘to know whichlevel they’re at’, and it ‘tells you what you need to improve’ (ML4) was the onlytrainee in the sample who suggested that assessment can also be about assessing theway a student learns. A mathematics specialist regarded assessment as ‘a vehicle tohelp students see that performance is valued for just the thinking process and thedecision-making and the problem-solving skills which students display in theirwork’ (Ma5).

It was only later in the interview process, in discussions where informants werespecifically asked about formative assessment, that trainees overwhelmingly agreedthat giving feedback to students (in addition to a grade) on their performance in a testor other piece of work could be useful in terms of helping students improve theirunderstanding, and hence, improve their grades. This suggests that trainees saw thevalue of formative assessment processes, but their conceptions of what is meant by‘assessment’ were still dominated by formal summative modes and outcomes.

Assessment policies

In most instances, interviewees reported that their placement schools set policies onassessment to increase ‘consistency’ within the school (ML2). Nevertheless, individ-ual departments were usually autonomous (Bi1, Ph4) in the manner and extent towhich they chose to (or indeed, chose not to) implement such policy. A mathematicstrainee suggested that some schools stress the importance of summative grading,whereas others ‘are happy for you to provide formative feedback’ (Ma5); and reportedthat in his placement school ‘it was left very much to the department and … that initself leads to tensions because in many subjects marks were given, and in othersubjects they weren’t, and students were left at times feeling uncertain why that is’(Ma5). Trainees suggested that department policies tended to be ‘a compromise’(Ma5) between giving a score and some evaluative feedback, the extent of the lattervarying substantially from department to department.

Forms of assessment experienced on professional placement

Formative assessment

Although trainees’ conceptions of formative assessment contained some elements ofBlack and Wiliam’s (1998a) interpretation, only two trainees’ conceptions (bothmathematics specialists) seemed to approach their prescription. One was of the opin-ion that formative assessment ‘is child-centred … a qualitative judgement of what thechild is doing in terms of its potential – you’re looking at how far the child has comealong the road towards his ultimate potential and you’re trying to find a way of guid-ing the child to make the rest of the journey’ (Ma4).

A number of trainees (Ph4, ML4, Ma3, Ma4) believed that formative assessmentpractices provide feedback to help students see how they could improve (Ph2, ML4,Ma2, Ma3) and so they are ‘aware how well they’re progressing’ (Ph4) – with severalsuggesting the dimension of progressing towards ‘targets’ (Ma3), or helping the pupil‘to pass’ (ML4): to ‘know how to get to the summative assessment’ (ML2, Ma5).Other trainees felt that formative assessment is ‘diagnostic for teachers to guide theirteaching’ (Ph2), especially ‘at the start of a unit or year’ (Ph3), giving feedback toteachers on ‘what they may have to change’ (Ph4).

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Contexts for formative assessment

It was generally agreed that formative assessment was an on-going process, whichoccurred every day in classrooms (Bi1, Mu2, Ph4) and included feedback on home-work and class-work, and verbal feedback on in-class questions or pieces of work. Insome subject areas, such as science and mathematics, trainees reported that diagnostictests at the start of a topic also seemed prevalent.

All trainees reported on homework and class-work tasks that had been corrected,with written and/or verbal comments made, although one mathematics specialistobserved that she had never seen teachers at her placement school give evaluativefeedback or comments, rather it was ‘tick, tick, tick’ and ‘excellent’ or ‘well done’ or‘see me’ (Ma3). Some trainees cited inconsistencies in the way teachers gave feed-back (Bi1, Ph2, Ph3, ML2, Mu2) – even within departments (Mu2) where ‘someteachers just give a mark and others … write reams and reams of paper on everything’(Mu1).

While a few trainees felt that students often focus on the summative gradeawarded, and disregarded feedback comments (Mu1, Ma5), the majority of respon-dents claimed the opposite – one recounting what pupils had told her:

oh miss we really like it when you give us a block of comments, when we make amistake you underline it and show us how to do it properly, because some teachers tellme that it’s wrong but they don’t tell me why. I understand that they expect me to goaway and work it out by myself, but it’s too hard to do that, and if you show me then Ipromise to do it that way next time. (ML2)

The use of oral questions put to individual students during class-time, and thesubsequent feedback offered by teachers, warrant special mention, as traineestended not to view this as formative assessment as such. Although informal ques-tioning was acknowledged by some trainees (Mu2, Ma2) as valuable in providinginformation which could be used as feedback, it was perceived as arbitrary (Ph2,Bi1, Mu2) and ‘non-structured’ (Ph4), leading to teachers just making ‘mentalnotes’ (Ph4).

Trainees in music, mathematics and physics mentioned that students in theirdepartments had to fill in self-assessment forms (usually at the end of modules), whichteachers then used to allocate levels. Peer assessment was mentioned by only twotrainees – mathematics and music specialists – whilst starter and plenary activitieswere only mentioned by music and physics specialists.

Summative assessment

All the respondents reported that summative assessment was the assigning of a markor grade to a piece of work that served as a judgement of the standard of that work. Itwas associated with a finality – which several trainees considered to be irreversibleand ‘backward looking’ (Ma3), so ‘there’s nothing you can do after that’ (ML2).Summative assessment as a ‘summing up at the end of a topic … with some kind oftest’ (Mu2), was a common feature which seemed to cut across all subject areas, andwas sometimes used for normative purposes, ‘where you judge the child against quitewell-defined criteria in terms of attainment and you make comparisons between chil-dren based on that’ (Ma4). One interviewee felt that summative assessment was liketelling the student ‘okay, that’s what you’re worth, basically’ (ML4), and it was

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suggested that it led to ‘undue pressure imposed on students to get good scores’, withpupils warned that results might be used to move them into different sets (Ma5).

Despite their reservations, all trainees did acknowledge that ‘there is a place forsummative assessment’ because of the need for ‘benchmarks’ (Ma2). Some traineesconsidered such summative assessment as a way to recognise a student’s ‘capabilities’officially (ML4, Ma3), and this linked it to the idea of ‘teacher and school account-ability – to policy-makers and politicians’ (Ma4, ML4, Ma5). One respondentsuspected that the head of mathematics at his placement school was appointed ‘on thebasis of … improvements in the standard of mathematics performance’, where teach-ing revolved round ‘a very tight regime’ of testing (Ma5).

Desirable assessment practice

In voicing their views as to how assessment should be conducted in schools, thissample of trainees expressed a wide range of opinions and concerns – in partreflecting the unavoidable variation between placement schools and departments.Some respondents were reasonably content with the range of assessment they hadobserved, i.e. awarding ‘explicit’ grades, giving feedback, setting targets (Ph3,Ph4). However, trainees strongly backed the notion that formative assessment waspreferable to summative assessment, asserting that it was not only less stressful tostudents than summative practices, but also supported learning through evaluativefeedback, whereas summative assessment ‘is just checking if you’ve learnt, it’s nothelping you to learn, which is a huge difference’ (ML4). The trainees indicatedthat for many of them the concept of assessment as an aid to learning was rela-tively new – if one they welcomed, despite the problems teachers faced in imple-menting it.

One trainee thought teachers should try and use as many different types ofassessment as possible, but only comments should be given to students, not actualgrades (Mu2); and another thought teachers should question pupils constantly, askingthem to explain and justify their answers (Ma3). A biology trainee suggested thatgiving feedback and recommending improvements to pupils should, above all, beaccompanied by praise (Bi1). However, the majority of interviewees thought thatthere were strong practical reasons for the fact that formative assessment wascommonly not being operationalised by teachers as much as they would like – it wasfelt that a lack of time within the school timetable, undue pressure of summativeassessment, and overly large class sizes would have to be overcome if assessment wasto be tailored for individual learning purposes (En1).

Respondents thought that summative assessment had a place in pupils’ schoollives, if only as ‘a necessary evil’ (Ph2) that provided the best objective means ofassessment for external agencies. Yet most respondents felt that there was too muchof it, with not enough time between assessments for pupils to try to work towardsachieving their set targets (Bi1). A mathematics trainee (Ma5) suggested that summa-tive assessment might foster ‘compartmentalised pieces of knowledge’. Several train-ees voiced the view that assessment is summative driven (En1, ML4) with too muchtraining of students in ‘tricks and techniques’ required to pass exams (Ph2), andpupils becoming accustomed to being ‘fed on a diet of scores’ (Ma5). This tied inwith some trainees’ own experiences of assessment (mainly dating back to theirschooldays) which most participants reported to have been predominantly summativebased.

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Discussion

Our study suggests that our informants have acquired a wide range of ideas aboutassessment, deriving as we expected from a range of sources, and filtered through theirown prior experiences. In particular, our findings show that trainee thinking about sucha complex area reflects both principled considerations, such as those put forward bythose promoting the new orthodoxy of AfL, but also the norms of custom and practice,and trainees’ perceptions of the constraints of high-stakes testing, and the expectationsof children, parents and managers. This should not be surprising, as it has been arguedthat the original principles behind AfL have, inevitably perhaps, become distorted asthey have been appropriated to be adopted in official policies, policies closely tied toan accountancy agenda that depends upon ‘objective data’ of evidenced performance(James, forthcoming). Such distortion can lead to enacted practices somewhat at oddswith an ideal ‘that seeks, reflects upon and responds to information from dialogue,demonstration and observation in ways that enhance ongoing learning’ (Klenowski2009, 264).

This snapshot of trainees’ developing conceptualisation of assessment at an earlystage in their ITE course is multifaceted. This suggests to us that the developmentof robust beliefs in the value and practicality of a classroom assessment regimedominated by formative assessment could be highly contingent on subsequentschool placement and early career experiences (James and Pedder 2006). The timingof our interview study, after one term of the one-year PGCE course, was chosenbecause our trainees will have begun the process of taking on identities as class-room teachers, but mostly still be working through legitimate peripheral participa-tion (Lave and Wenger 1991). At this point in their course, trainees’ priorexperiences are still relatively salient, although they have been introduced to thenature and purposes of different modes of assessment. Trainees will also have spentconsiderable time observing different school classes, and have begun, under closeguidance, the process of planning, teaching and evaluating short sequences oflessons.

It is important to recognise that the informants in this study were a modestlysized convenience sample, and their views may not be fully representative of theircohort (even less trainees in other ITE partnerships). Alongside our interview studywe also surveyed the whole cohort using an instrument that had previously beenused to explore teachers’ perceptions of assessment issues (Pedder and James2007). This survey found that (i) on cluster analysis trainee teachers’ responsescould be fitted into similar (but not the same) clusters that Pedder and James (2007)reported in their study with teachers in-service; (ii) there was some evidence ofsubject-based differences in the way trainees perceived aspects of assessment; and,of particular interest, (iii) trainees’ perceptions of their own assessment practices onschool placement did not match their perceptions of effective assessment practices(Winterbottom et al. 2008b). This difference can be understood as a perception ofclassroom practice falling short of the ideal (Winterbottom et al. 2008a). The inter-view study reported here leads to a similar conclusion, that trainees often feel thatwhat they see and are guided to do in the classroom does not match up to theideals that are widely discussed in the academic and professional literature theyread, and the official guidance issued to them. It was also clear that there werequite large differences in assessment practices between schools, and in some casesbetween different classrooms in the same school. This reflects the approach in the

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English system for government agencies to issue general recommendations on goodpractice which are then subject to interpretation at the schools and/or departmentallevel (Taber 2010a).

We would hope and expect that trainees’ ideas about assessment shift through andbeyond the PGCE. The present research offers a snap-shot, but reinforces our initialthinking that:

(i) assessment represents a complex area of educational thinking and practice,where professional learning may be challenging;

(ii) the different sources of ‘input’ to trainee thinking, and in particular their pastexperiences as students, their exposure to the ‘new orthodoxy’, and theirinterpretations of placement experience, may not readily be reconciled orsynthesised into a coherent picture;

(iii) trainees are often likely to experience a tension between what they are told isgood practice, and what they perceive as the dominant mode of assessmentexperienced in schools.

This exploratory study has confirmed that this area of professional learning isdifficult and challenging for many trainee teachers. This suggests further research isindicated to explore the dynamics of trainee learning to appreciate how understandingof assessment and perceptions of assessment processes are constrained and channelledby the different sources of their ideas. A number of potentially valuable research fociare suggested by this work:

(i) How do trainees’ past experiences of their own education channel both theirprior conceptions about assessment before beginning ITE, and their interpre-tations of placement experiences? For example, if graduates come to teachereducation already associating ‘assessment’ with tests and exams, how doesthis bias their learning during their course? It would seem that for some train-ees informal teacher questioning does not seem like ‘proper’ assessment,whereas experienced professionals recognise how such formative assessmentinforms the myriad ‘on-line’ decisions that teachers make as they steer learn-ing in the classroom.

(ii) This also leads us to ask to what extent are trainees able to interpret what theyobserve in classrooms, and how does this change with increased experience?Much informal formative assessment takes place unmarked as part of the flowof classroom interaction.

(iii)To what extent does working with pupils, and appreciating their learning diffi-culties and achievements, influence the developing teacher’s ideas about therelative value and importance of different modes of assessment?

(iv) Are there subject-based differences in trainees’ learning pathways aboutassessment – either related to differences in disciplinary background, or toaspects of the curriculum and pedagogy associated with particular schoolsubjects?

(v) How does the professional context of school placement (school/departmentethos and assessment norms/policies) interact with more ‘theoretical’ knowl-edge derived from faculty teaching and reading of academic and professionalliterature?

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A full exploration of this issue would require a programme of research whichincluded longitudinal aspects, to follow development over time, and the complemen-tary use of survey techniques (able to follow shifts in a cohort’s responses and to lookat issues relating to subject-based differences) and more in-depth exploration of thethinking of individuals and the professional contexts they experience on school place-ments. Such enquiry could provide the basis for a more interventionist phase ofresearch, that could explore how trainee teachers might best be helped to reflect uponand develop more nuanced perceptions of the assessment context, and – ultimately –more coherence between their views of the most effective type of assessment andpractice (cf. Winterbottom et al. 2008b).

The type of research programme we are suggesting here reflects research intopupil thinking. For example research into learning science progressed from reportinglearners’ conceptions of science topics (Duit 2007), to exploring issues such as theorigins of children’s alternative conceptions, how these ideas interact with teaching,the learning pathways pupils’ ideas follow, and whether particular conceptions arebest understood as impediments to target learning, or useful intermediate stages on aconceptual trajectory (Taber 2006). Such a research programme has been shown tohave considerable potential to inform teaching at school level, and we envisage some-thing similar being equally valuable in teacher education.

AcknowledgementsThe authors are grateful to the trainee teachers who agreed to be interviewed, and would liketo thank other members of the teaching team for their support for the project and Dr SanjanaMehta for her contribution to data collection. The project was supported by the University ofCambridge Faculty of Education’s Research Development Fund.

Notes on contributorsThe authors are based at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education.

Keith S. Taber is Senior Lecturer in Science Education and Deputy Manager of the Master’sprogramme in Education.

Fran Riga is a doctoral candidate, and a teacher and researcher.

Sue Brindley is Senior Lecturer in Education and coordinated the Faculty ‘Research Practice’blended learning MEd course.

Mark Winterbottom is Lecturer in Science Education with research interests in teacher educa-tion.

John Finney was Senior Lecturer in Music Education before recently retiring, but continues tobe involved in faculty teaching and research.

Linda G. Fisher is Lecturer in Education specialising in modern foreign languages, and hasresearch interests in teacher beliefs and teacher learning.

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Appendix 1Interview schedule for semi-structured interviews of trainees

(1) What do you think assessment is/what does assessment mean to you?(2) Who do you think assessment is for/what is the value of assessment?(3) How do you think teachers conduct assessment?(4) Do you think assessment differs across subjects, if so, in what way?(5) How would you make assessments in your subject?(6) What if your training was in a different subject area?(7) How do you think assessment is normally carried out? How do you think it should be

carried out?(8) What does formative assessment mean to you?(9) What does summative assessment mean to you?(10)What is assessment for learning?

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formative conceptions of assessment: trainee teachers’ thinking about assessment issues in english...

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