| Popis: |
Formative assessment has been suggested as a means to support student learning in inquiry-based science education. However, teachers need support in implementing formative assessment practices, such as peer-assessment, in their daily teaching. As a prerequisite for shaping suitable means of support, primary and upper secondary teachers’ perspectives on benefits and challenges of peer-assessment in inquiry learning have been explored. Data was collected from 7 primary and 10 upper secondary school teachers from Switzerland who implemented peer-assessment in their science classes. The data included teaching plans, evaluation forms, individual interviews, and group interviews. Inductive coding of the data revealed that the teachers perceived challenges of peer-assessment at the level of teaching practice but also at the level of educational policy. These results suggest that different measures of support such as professional development programmes, but also concrete examples and tools as well as guidelines from educational policy are needed. Considering the benefits of peer-assessment, the teachers from both school levels did not only believe that peer-assessment enhances student learning but also anticipated social and motivational effects. This result implies that formative assessment theories should be more closely connected to learning theories in which student motivation has been identified as a main contributor to learning. |
