We help schools rely less on teacher-directed instruction by creating classroom cultures that equip students to monitor and direct their own learning. To prepare educators to cultivate this role, we partner with schools and districts to integrate formative assessment. In this process, teachers and students gather and interpret evidence of learning to meet learning goals.
How We Help
WestEd leads professional learning in formative assessment with thousands of educators participating across the nation, both in person and online. To support this transformative paradigm shift toward shared responsibility for learning, we encourage and support educators to rethink and reframe how they plan and carry out instruction. When students share ownership of their learning, their motivation and engagement increases, fostering classroom participation and academic achievement.
Our professional learning experiences for teachers model and integrate key elements of formative assessment. We support teacher learning by integrating key practices related to effective formative assessment, such as helping teachers and students develop daily learning goals, collecting and using evidence to monitor those goals, and engaging in peer learning.
- Participating school leaders support their teachers in learning and practicing formative assessment to improve their instructional practice.
- Teachers learn how to help their students become skilled in key formative assessment practices.
- Participating educational leaders also learn what is needed in teacher support policies and systems to scale and sustain the use of formative assessment across schools and districts.
Service Delivery
- Online and onsite
Who Will Benefit
- Teachers
- Coaches
- School and District Administrators
- State Educational Agency Administrators
I’m encouraged by the fact that this [formative assessment] work gives our students power over their learning, and they’re not seeing themselves as just good students, but they’re developing an identity in the classroom that allows them to grow, and feel confident, and be successful when they leave my class.
— Larissa Peru
HS Mathematics Teacher, Tucson, AZ
Featured Experts
Cali Kaminsky
Connecting Research With Practice
Formative assessment is a process through which teachers and students integrate in-the-moment evidence of learning into daily classroom teaching and learning. This definition is well-documented in research and international policy documents with numerous published definitions. WestEd has adopted Bell and Cowie’s (2001) definition of formative assessment, “The process used by teachers and students to notice, recognize, and respond to student learning in order to enhance that learning, during the learning.”
Read a descriptive study about teachers’ use of formative assessment practices.
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