This descriptive phenomenology study investigated middle school mathematics teachers' formative assessment practices in the Dominican Republic. The study explored three research questions about the types of formative assessment strategies teachers implemented, how they used formative assessment data to make instructional decisions, and the…

Decades of research indicate that formative assessment promotes achievement (Black & Wiliam, 1998a; Hattie & Timperley, 2007) and that we must learn more about how to implement formative assessment effectively in higher education settings (Bennett, 2011; Kingston & Nash, 2011; Morris et al., 2021) where most instructors deliver…

My dissertation comprises three studies designed to explore nuances of data use in education that presently confound the relationship between variation in teachers' practice of data use and student outcomes: (1) the relationships between different data sources within and across instructional practices; (2) the dimensionality of teachers' practice…

The instructional and assessment environments that students experience can have an enormous impact on their mathematical success, their understandings of what mathematics is, and their views of themselves as learners and doers of mathematics. While there has been ample research conducted about how teachers use assessment results to inform their…

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine how teachers' beliefs affect their use of formative assessment practices. I studied the teachers' values of formative assessments, as well as how they used formative assessments in the classroom. Additionally, I examined how the teachers used the formative assessment results to not only modify their…

The learning journey toward sustainability requires the generation of action-oriented knowledge to understand the progress and potential adaptation of strategies to facilitate collective transformation. One integral area where advancing these strategies is essential is higher education. While efforts in the field have identified relevant learning…

For centuries, education policymakers have sought to identify the most effective way to assess a potential teacher's readiness to enter the classroom. These assessments evolved from multiple choice examinations to performance-based assessments focused on teacher actions. The latest iteration of these performance-based assessments is edTPA. edTPA's…

The adoption of the Common Core State Standards has necessitated a change in the instructional practices used by many mathematics teachers. The new standards encourage problem solving and the development of conceptual understanding rather than rote memorization of formulas and rules. Researchers have demonstrated that formative assessment is a…

This study employed a mixed methods approach to evaluate the meaning and value of grades within a traditional grading system. Teachers' grading and assessment practices were examined in terms of clarity, consistency, and to what extent assessment guided instruction. Teachers from a high-performing suburban high school in the Northeast responded to…

If blended learning in K-12 schools is to truly provide a student-centered experience, there is a need understand the interplay between teacher beliefs and practices to better support teachers tasked with blended teaching. This case study of a small blended high school answers the question, "How do teachers experience blended teaching and…

There is a plethora of research pertaining to Response to Intervention (RTI) implementation at the elementary school setting. However, research studies on teachers' perceptions relative to implementing RTI in a middle school tier-based classroom had not been conducted. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine teachers' perception…

Formative assessment is a classroom learning process that consists of clear goals and objectives, assessing students' knowledge, providing feedback and adjusting instruction based upon the data within a socially interactive process. Because of inconsistent implementation of the formative assessment process within classrooms, the efficacy of the…

The present study was designed to examine the PLC elements identified by the leadership team at Angel Primary School. The three features of the school's implemented innovation were common formative assessment, the school's collaboration plan and differentiated instruction. The data collection instruments allowed participants (n = 18) to indicate…

With increasing demands on student achievement as set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) (2001), teachers are the catalyst for improving their students' performance (Marzano, 2000). Existing studies on the use of formative assessment as a process by which teachers elicit information of their students' progress and use that information to…

This dissertation responds to critical gaps in current research on formative assessment practice which could limit successful implementation of this practice within the K-12 classroom context. The study applies a socio cultural perspective of learning to interpret a cross-case analysis of formative assessment practice occurring during one…