Formative assessment and increased
student involvement increases grades
in Biology
Martin Granbom
Katedralskolan, Lund
Curriculum criterion
“Students should have knowledge about gene technological methods, practical applications and be able to discuss possibilities and risks from an ethical perspective”
Inspired by Grant & Wiggins, 1998. Educative assessment
Freccero, Hortlund & Posette, 2006. Bedömning av kvalitativkunskap
Examples of areas of interest
• What is gene therapy?
• Cloning
• Are genetically modified organisms bad food?
• Can you design a baby?
• Will gene technology be the solution to world
famine?
Working methods
• Teacher led lectures
• Laborations
• Study visits
• Discussions in different group constallations
• Invite guest lecturers
• Film
• Webb discussions (via learning platform)
• Self guided studies
Examination form
• Written test
• Individual essay
• Group project
• Individual Power point account
• Oral test (individual/group)
• Debate
Oral examination
• 4-5 students for appr. 30 minutes
• Group construction
• Prepared questions and ”entries”
• Took notes in the rubric and filmed (some)
• Coassessment of films
• Summatively assessed
Why?
• Explicit expectations, constructed by students
themselves
• Engaged
• Group pressure
• Repeated revisions
• Different perspectives
BUT…
Support in literature
Natriello, G. 1987. The Impact of Evaluation Processes on Students. EducationalPsychologist, 22(2), 155–175.
Wiliam, D. 2011. What is assessment for learning? Studies in Educational Evaluation, 37(1),3-14.
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. 2007. The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112.
Lam, C. F., Derue, D. S., Karam, E. P. & Hollenbeck, J. R. 2011. The impact of feedback frequency on learning and task performance: Challenging the "More is better" Assumption.Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 116(2), 217-228.
Huxham, M. et al. 2012. Oral vs. written assessments: A test of student performance. Assessment and evaluation in higher education, 37(1):125-136.
Alternative hypotheses
• Students get higher grades in oral tests?
• Gene technology is more interesting?
• The teacher acted differently?
Difficult to separate the effect of teacher,
examination form and interest.
Focus group interviews
• Two groups of 5-7 ex-students
• Students graduated one year ago
• Focus groups from former school classes
• Approximately 90 minutes
• Moderator and active observer
What do you remember about the gene technology
teaching sequence?
1. Laboration with glowing bacteria
2. GMO
3. Ethical discussions
4. Films about GMO maize cookies
5. PCR
6. Web resources (www.forskning.se)
7. Oral test
8. Self studies
Analysis
• Content analysis - Kvale (1997) and Patton
(2002).
• Interviews were recorded and transcribed
• Interviews were coded
• Codes grouped in predefined categories
• Atlas.ti
Defining aim and criteria
“well… if we, personally, framed the assessment
criteria, then we had needed to have been
thinking a bit – yes, about what we wanted to
learn, as you said. We had been discussing what
we wanted… Then it gets much more fun, I
mean that it becomes easier as well, compared to
receiving already determined criteria of what we
are supposed to learn”.
Variation
“…and then there was huge variation. It wasn’t
like there was one way of learning and that was
it, but it was just like with Gene technology that
we then were allowed to choose what we wanted
to deepen into. About framing the goals and all
that, maybe, isn’t so, isn’t that important
compared to that we were allowed to choose”
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