Effects of Electronic Formative Assessments on Achievement in Years 7-8 Mathematics

The mathematics performance of students in the UK is neither stellar nor disastrous. On the 2004 TIMSS, students in England scored significantly lower than those in such countries as Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Belgium, and the Netherlands, but ahead of pupils in countries such as the US, Australia, and New Zealand. These results do not justify complacency. Success in mathematics is believed to be a key factor in countries’ long-term economic success, and there is no reason that students in the UK could not achieve as well in this subject as those in such similar countries as the Netherlands and Belgium. However, in order to improve standards of performance in this subject throughout the UK, the quality of teaching and learning will have to improve on a broad scale. In the US, a recent distinguished panel of educators carried out a detailed review, and concluded that real improvement in mathematics will require changes in daily teaching practices, not just improved curriculum or standards (National Mathematics Panel, 2008). The same is true in the UK, or in any other country committed to improving mathematics outcomes (see Askew, Brown, Rhodes, Johnson, & Wiliam, 1997; Ma, 1997). A recent technological development in the UK offers a means of making meaningful replicable improvements in pupils’ mathematics performance. This is the appearance and widespread adoption in the United Learning Trust of electronic response devices typically used in conjunction with interactive whiteboards, which are also used extensively across the group. An interactive whiteboard is a large screen that makes it possible for teachers to manipulate and present to entire classroom groups anything that can be shown on a laptop or desktop or designed using the software accompanying the whiteboard. An electronic response device (ERD) is a small handheld unit that enables all students to indicate a given answer in response to any question posed by the teacher or written on the whiteboard. ERDs allow students to key in their own answers using a keypad similar to those on cell phones, freeing the devices from the limitations of multiple choice assessments. Teachers can display students’ responses immediately on a whiteboard in a variety of formats, from summary graphs to displays of individual students’ responses. In theory, ERDs provide teachers with a powerful tool to accelerate student achievement. A great deal of research has established that providing frequent formative feedback, to give both the teacher and the students themselves immediate indicators of students’ current levels of understanding and that of the class as a whole, can have a substantial impact on student learning. Studies in the UK (e.g., Black & Wiliam, 1998) and the US (e.g., Natriello, 1987; Crooks, 1988; McMillan, 2004) have shown that frequent formative assessments in daily classroom instruction can accelerate students’ learning by several processes: • Giving teachers immediate information on students’ learning, so that they can regulate the pace and content of lessons according to current levels of mastery and identify students in need of additional help; • Giving students feedback on their own learning, enabling them to regulate and evaluate their own learning efforts; • Giving students routine opportunities to participate actively in lessons, a key precursor to achievement success (e.g.; Good, Grouws, & Ebmeier, 1983); • Giving students routine opportunities to see how their peers are solving problems and incorporating effective learning approaches used by peers (Slavin, 1995); • Motivating students to learn academic content and skills by giving them a stake in the outcomes of instruction, as students are more interested in academic content when they have had to take a public position or give a public answer. The widespread adoption of electronic response devices creates new opportunities to help teachers incorporate various formative assessment strategies into their daily lessons. However, the use of ERDs has never been evaluated in a rigorous experiment. This paper reports on a randomised experiment to evaluate the use of ERDs in Key Stage 3 (years 7-10) mathematics.

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