Affordances and Constraints of Learning Progression Designs in Supporting Formative Assessment

Abstract

Learning progressions, or representations of how student ideas develop in particular science domains, have been argued to be important supports for teachers’ formative assessment design and enactment. While many learning progressions have been developed in recent years, they have various design features and span wide ranges of grade levels. This paper examines how six teacher learning communities drew upon different learning progressions in high school physics, chemistry, and biology to support their processes of formative assessment task design, interpretation of student ideas, and planning for feedback over the course of one academic year. Our analyses of field notes, artifacts, and teacher interviews indicate that learning progressions were used unevenly across the process of formative assessment design, with more emphasis in exploring student ideas and setting learning goals than in designing the actual task or using the progressions to sort and interpret student ideas and identify next instructional steps. However, using assessment items linked to progressions seemed to support conversations with more direct instructional action. Results are framed in the context of the potential and challenges associated with widespread use of learning progressions to support teachers’ classroom practices.