Using formative assessment to support complex learning in conditions of social adversity

This article reports on research into formative assessment within a task design that produces multiple opportunities for teacher and pupil dialogue. It draws upon in-depth case studies conducted in schools in socially-deprived areas of Scotland, using policy and documentary analysis, video-observation, and an iterative series of interviews with pupils and teachers. The research confirmed the power of this task design, and teachers skillfulness in deploying it, but raises questions about the understandings of assessment that supported teachers criteria development, and the ways criteria were brought into classroom dialogue. A large disjuncture is identified between assessing the complexities of these tasks and the assessment vocabularies inherited by teachers. Relational understandings of teaching, learning and assessment that better address teacher positionality are suggested as useful for supporting a standards-based approach to assessment, as well as for addressing issues of social equity.