Abstract
Teacher educators play a significant role in the preparation of pre-service teachers to become assessment-literate and able to practice after their training. In this respect, an exploration of teacher educators' practices of formative assessment (FA) will provide an insight into the kind of assessment practices that their students are exposed to. This study therefore used a qualitative approach underpinned by an interpretivist research paradigm to explore mathematics teacher educators’ (MTEs) understanding and practices of FA within a system of activity in mathematics modules. The objectives that guided this study were: Determining how MTEs implement FA in mathematics modules; and exploring why MTEs adopt FA techniques in their instruction. The qualitative, interpretive study was framed using activity theory and was located at three teacher colleges in the Central Region of Ghana. To triangulate the data, multiple types of data were generated from six MTEs after they signed a consent form to participate in the study. Data were generated through the administration of semi - structured interviews, lesson observations and perusal of textual materials. Thematic coding and interpretive strategies were employed to analyse the data generated. The analysis and the subsequent findings were established based mainly on participants’ responses from the transcribed semi-structured interviews, lesson observation transcripts and document analysis. The findings of the study revealed that teacher educators were able to implement some FA techniques with success, while other techniques were implemented in a disjointed manner. Questioning was found to be the principal technique that teacher educators employ in gathering information
Author Information
Justice Enu, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana
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