Formative Assessment in Mathematics

This chapter is concerned with formative assessment for learning mathematics. The challenge is particularly acute for mathematics since, in the US and around the world, teaching has typically addressed a narrow range of learning goals, largely confined to technical skills taught as procedures through show-and-practice, so change is decidedly a challenge. A fundamental issue, then, is how to enable mathematics teachers to acquire the new and challenging pedagogical and mathematical skills needed to implement formative assessment successfully in their classrooms. A mathematical task may be enriched, for example, by having students view the task using a range of representations and compare the insights gained by using different representations. A fundamental element in formative assessment is the surfacing of each student’s understandings and misconceptions. A basic misapprehension about formative assessment is that the teacher is responsible for setting all the students straight.