Learning Intentions, Success Criteria, and Metacognition: The Influence of a Professional Development for Grades Three to Five Teachers

Formative assessment is a strategy that teachers use to improve student learning. This study explored how professional development focused on assessment for learning practices (AFL), with the main emphasis on learning intentions and success criteria, influences teacher use of those strategies and changes in teacher and student metacognition. The overarching research question was: How does professional development on AFL practices influence teachers' reported use of AFL practices and teacher and student metacognition? This study utilized a mixes-methods research design and provided professional development on AFL practices to 16 in-service elementary mathematics teachers and measured changes to their AFL practices and metacognition using two surveys: the AfLMi for AFL and the MAIT for metacognition. Five teachers were selected to participate in a case study to explore how they understood their professional development on AFL strategies using semi-structured interviews. Ten students were interviewed to triangulate the findings. The results found that the teacher's AfLMi scores showed a statistically significant decrease, and the MAIT scores saw a non-statistically significant increase. The teacher and student interviews indicated that the teachers did not reduce their use of formative assessment practices but did change their perspective of why they used them. Teachers and students identified multiple effective practices with formative assessment and noted novel approaches in regard to formative assessment practices. Teacher interviews demonstrated teachers showing a change in what they were metacognitive about. Students also showed some increase in their metacognition, becoming more aware of their teacher's formative assessment practices.