STEM Education Institute Tuesday Seminar
Teacher Learning of Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment: A research project involving secondary school science and math classroom response systems and teacher professional development.
Ian Beatty
Physics Education Research Group
Scientific Reasoning Research Institute
University of Massachusetts
Experience and research show that "classroom response system" technology, such as InterWrite PRS, can be very powerful for supporting student-centered instruction, formative assessment, and teacher change when used skillfully in the service of good pedagogy. It also shows that for most teachers, learning to use the technology and pedagogy is a challenging and slow process. SRRI members are currently half-way through a five year NSF-funded project in which we give PRS sets to teachers at three area schools, provide an intensive and long-running professional development program to help participants learn to use them effectively, and study the details of how they learn, adapt to, and personalize the approach. We'll introduce the technology and pedagogy with a hands-on demonstration, and share some of the things we're learning from our participating teachers.