From Teacher-Centred to Student-(Co)Designing: A Mixed-Methods Study Identifying Formative Assessment Teacher Profiles

Abstract More empirical research about how teachers use and implement formative assessment (FA) is needed to support teachers in an evidence-based matter in their FA implementation and FA professionalisation. This mixed methods study used FA perceptions of 96 teachers and interview and observation data of fifteen teachers about their FA practice to answer the following questions: (1) What FA teacher profiles could be extracted from teachers’ FA perceptions? (2) How do background characteristics influence the FA practice perceptions? and (3) How does the FA practice of teachers differ from each other? The five phases of the FA cycle were used as a framework to define FA practice: (1) Clarifying expectations; (2) Eliciting student responses; (3) Analysing and interpreting responses; (4) Communicating with students about responses; and (5) Taking follow-up actions: adapting teaching and learning. Three teacher profiles were created with cluster analysis: teacher-centred FA user, student-activating FA user and student-(co)designing FA user . The results showed that teachers of all three teacher profiles used FA strategies of the complete FA cycle process. The differences were that the FA strategies differed in focus from mostly teacher-centred to student-centred FA strategies. Implications supporting teachers in professionalisation trajectories who are developing and implementing FA practice and adopting more student-centred FA stances are discussed.