We describe a formative assessment approach called whole-class think alouds, which foster evidence-based instructional practices and promote the goal of assessment to promote learning. They allow students to collaborate and orally communicate their problem solving.

Critical Thinking is a transversal skill needed to face current and future challenges, longed for in school, work, and life. Paradoxically, such relevance does not always translate into tangible efforts to measure and promote it. We present the cross-cultural translation, adaptation, and validation process of Critical Thinking Mindset Self-Rating…

Practitioners face many challenges when working with students who are experiencing difficulty with comprehension. The act of creating meaning with texts is complex, and comprehension is often measured in schools as a product of reading. Product assessments, such as answering questions or retelling a text, take place after reading, which makes it…

We describe the use of think alouds to examine substantive processes involved in performance on a formative assessment of computational thinking (CT) designed to support self-regulated learning (SRL). Our task design model included three phases of work on a computational thinking problem: forethought, performance, and reflection. The cognitive…

The goal of this study was to examine how students process formative feedback that included corrective and elaborative information in online question-answering tasks. Skilled and less-skilled comprehenders in grade 8 read texts and answered comprehension questions. Prior to responding, students were asked to select the textual information relevant…

Across education, certification and licensure, there are repeated calls for the development of assessments that target "higher-order thinking," as opposed to mere recall of facts. A common assumption is that this necessitates the use of constructed response or essay-style test questions; however, empirical evidence suggests that this may…

Gaining access to interdisciplinary research sites poses unique research challenges to technical and professional communication scholars and practitioners. Drawing on applied experiences in externally funded interdisciplinary research projects and scholarship about interdisciplinary research, this article describes a training protocol for…

Purposes: This study uses think-alouds and cognitive interviews to provide validity evidence for an online formative assessment--i-Ready Standards Mastery (iSM) mini-assessments--which involves a heavy use of innovative items. iSM mini-assessments are intended to help teachers determine student understanding of each of the on-grade-level Common…

The think-aloud approach to classroom writing assessment is designed to expand teachers' perspectives on adolescent students as writers and help them integrate instruction and assessment in a timely way. Emphasizing learning over evaluation, it is especially well-suited to revealing students' strengths and helping them overcome common challenges…

The act of creating meaning with texts is complex, and this complexity creates unclear views of instruction in schools and even greater perplexity in knowing how to instruct students who may be struggling in this area of their schoolwork. Comprehension is often measured in schools as a product and an outcome, making it difficult to understand why…

This study introduces an innovative instructional method, called "pseudo peer diagram" (PPD), where students employ executive skills to compare and contrast their work with others' as a formative feedback mechanism. The focus of this study is how students compare and contrast their own diagrams with the pseudo peer diagrams as a stimulus…

This article considers the design process for new formative history assessments. Over the course of 3 years, my colleagues from the Stanford History Education Group and I designed, piloted, and revised dozens of "History Assessments of Thinking" (HATs). As we created HATs, we sought to gather information about their cognitive validity,…

The Berge et al. article in this volume presents the functional construct of writing that underlies summative and formative assessment of writing as a key competency in Norway. A functional construct implies that specific acts of writing and their purposes constrain what is a relevant selection among the semiotic resources that writing generally…

This study sought to establish whether and how writing their own reflections in open online reflective journals (ORJs) can encourage and support online learners to engage in self formative assessment and meaningful reflections. The study employed case-study methodology within the context of postgraduate teacher education. The study findings show…

Students who harbor misconceptions often find chemistry difficult to understand. To improve teaching about the dissolving process, first semester introductory chemistry students were asked to complete a free-response questionnaire on writing balanced equations for dissolving ionic compounds in water. To corroborate errors and misconceptions…