Formative assessment is about providing and using feedback and diagnostic information. On this basis, further learning or further teaching should be adaptive and, in the best case, optimized. However, this aspect is difficult to implement in reality, as teachers work with a large number of students and the whole process of formative assessment,…

Although the number of publications on formative assessment in science education has long been high, there is no bibliometric analysis or scientific mapping in the literature to understand research trends in formative assessment research. This research aimed to examine the bibliometric results of articles on formative assessment in science…

Comparison is an important geographic method and a common task in geography education. Mastering comparison is a complex competency and written comparisons are challenging tasks both for students and assessors. As yet, however, there is no set test for evaluating comparison competency nor tool for enhancing it. Moreover, little is known about…

Integrating literacy in science and mathematics learning and teaching has been an ongoing endeavour. There are frameworks developed to guide teachers' practices, but little is reported on assessing literacy simultaneously with scientific or mathematical content knowledge. We reviewed the literature on assessing literacy in science and mathematics…

Purpose: This study aims to investigate how physical education teachers analyze their students' swimming skills. Particular attention is given to information gathering within the diagnostic process. Methods: Data were collected from a quantitative online survey of German physical education teachers from primary and secondary schools (n = 551).…

The COVID-19 pandemic put academic institutions around the world in the difficult position of suddenly having to organize many lectures and examinations over online channels only, due to students' physical access to their campus buildings being restricted. While the search for possible solutions to this problem was often challenging, this…

This study examined the joint effects of social comparisons (comparisons of one's own achievements with those of others), dimensional comparisons (comparisons of one's own achievements in different domains), and temporal comparisons (comparisons of one's own achievements across time) on students' ability assessments. For the first time a…

Social semiotic discussions about the role played by representations in effective teaching and learning in areas such as physics have led to theoretical proposals that have a strong common thread: in order to acquire an appropriate understanding of a particular object of learning, access to the disciplinary relevance aspects in the representations…

Background: Formative assessments are needed to enable monitoring how student knowledge develops throughout a unit. Constructed response items which require learners to formulate their own free-text responses are well suited for testing their active knowledge. However, assessing such constructed responses in an automated fashion is a complex task…

Computational thinking (CT) is seen as a key competence of the 21st century and different countries have started to integrate it into their compulsory school curricula. However, few indications exist on how to assess CT in compulsory school. This review analyses what tools are used to assess CT in European schools and which dimensions are…

As argumentation is an activity at the heart of mathematics, (not only) German school curricula request students to construct mathematical arguments, which get evaluated by teachers. However, it remains unclear which criteria teachers use to decide on a specific grade in a summative assessment setting. In this paper, we draw on two sources for…

Lockdowns imposed by many countries on their populations at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis forced teachers to adapt quickly and without adequate preparation to distance teaching. In this paper, we focus on one of the most formidable challenges that teachers faced during the lockdowns and even in the post-lockdown emergency period, namely,…

In this paper, the authors discuss their experiences with ungrading at a small public university in the U.S. and a large public university in Germany. The courses described are Calculus 1 and a content course for pre-service secondary teachers of mathematics. The professors teach differently: one with lecture, the other with inquiry-based…

This pilot study has two areas of focus. It examines how the knowledge and competences of twelve Master's-level systemic counselling trainees are connected, and how well their own assessment of their competence corresponds to external assessment. Methodologically, three instruments were used: first, an instrument to measure their explicit…

This action research study presents the findings of using a formative assessment strategy in an online mathematic course during the world-wide outbreak of COVID-19 at the University of Passau, Germany. The main goals of this study were: (1) to enhance students' self-regulated learning by shifting the direction of assessment from instructors to the…