Graduation Term

2014

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Department of Educational Administration and Foundations: Educational Administration

Committee Chair

Dr. Dianne Gardner Renn

Abstract

The purpose of this program evaluation was to determine how teachers have come to understand, use, and value formative assessment through their participation in our Assessment for Learning Teams for the past five years. Greeno, Collins, & Resnick's (1996) learning theory serves as the theoretical framework of the evaluation, as this program evaluation serves to determine if, and how, teachers have changed their mental models of assessment from a Behaviorist-Differentiationist model to the Cognitive-Situative model, or from an Assessment of Learning view of assessment, to an Assessment for Learning perspective. In order to determine if teachers have gained the conceptual and practical tools from the professional development program to make this shift, evaluation questions include: After participating in the professional development program, how do these teachers understand, use, and value Assessment for Learning? The interviewer conducted focus group interviews of the Learning Team members from three high schools where the professional development had taken place. Classroom observations and document analysis were the other methods for data collections for this evaluation. The Learning Teams' understandings, stories, interpretations, and descriptions presented in this dissertation have been cross cut with the observation and document data to present five significant findings: 1) AfL allows for the impetus for learning to be located within the student; 2) with AfL, the teacher and student to work on the same team towards learning standards; 3) teachers must often surrender control of certain student behaviors; 4) high school traditions must often be manipulated or accommodated in order to implement AfL; and 5) AfL is part of what is considered good, effective teaching. These findings have implications for administrations of other districts implementing AfL professional development as well as our own district moving forward to fill gaps in our own professional development. Therefore, recommendations for further development of AfL in our district are offered as well.

Access Type

Dissertation-Open Access

DOI

http://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2014.Feehery.A

Download

Share

COinS