An exploration of mathematics teacher educators’ understanding and practices of formative assessment: a case of three colleges in Ghana.

Abstract

Teacher educators play a significant role in the preparation of pre-service teachers to become assessment-literate and able to practice after their training. In this respect, an exploration of teacher educators' understanding, and practices of formative assessment (FA) will provide an insight into the kind of assessment practices that their students are exposed to. There is a lack of evidence on teacher educators’ understanding of FA and its implementation in mathematics modules, especially in the Ghanaian context. This thesis therefore uses a qualitative approach underpinned by an interpretivist research paradigm to explore mathematics teacher educators’ (MTEs) understanding and practices of FA within a system of activity in mathematics modules. The objectives that guided this study were: to explore MTEs’ understanding and practices of FA in mathematics; determining how MTEs implement FA in mathematics modules; and finally, exploring why MTEs adopt FA techniques in their instruction. The qualitative, interpretive study was framed using activity theory and was located at three teacher colleges in the Central Region of Ghana. To triangulate the data, multiple types of data were generated from six MTEs after they signed a consent form to participate in the study. Data were generated through the administration of semistructured interviews, lesson observations and perusal of textual materials. Thematic coding and interpretive strategies were employed to analyse the data generated. The analysis and the subsequent findings were established based mainly on participants’ responses from the transcribed semi-structured interviews, lesson observation transcripts and document analysis. The findings of this study revealed that MTEs understand FA as an ongoing activity that forms an integral part of teachers' pedagogical practices and occurs before, during and after teaching and learning. Significantly, they also recounted that the main role of FA is to gain evidence about students to enhance the instruction and learning process. The study also demonstrated that teacher educators were able to implement some FA techniques with success, while other techniques were implemented in a disjointed manner. Questioning was found to be the principal technique that teacher educators employ in gathering information about students’ learning and for checking their instructional methodology. The findings of the study further established that the ultimate reason which informs teacher educators' decision to adopt FA strategies is their wish to amend and enhance students’ mathematics performance, and to forestall it from further deteriorating. However, while teacher educators adopt FA techniques in their teaching, lack of material resources and college assessment policy seem to be a roadblock to the efficient implementation of FA in mathematics. Knowledge of these inhibiting factors is useful to college management and heads of mathematics departments in order to address MTEs’ challenges in FA and to minimise these barriers for effective implementation of FA techniques in the mathematics modules.