LIFE SCIENCES TEACHERS’ PLANNING OF LESSONS FOR FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN INQUIRY-BASED TEACHING

Abstract

Formative assessment (FA) is considered one of the most powerful tools to enhance learning and influences the development of inquiry skills . However, few studies have addressed how Life Sciences teachers plan for formative assessment in inquiry-based teaching. A lesson plan is one of the crucial tasks for any science teacher since it assists in the presentation of a lesson. Lesson plans show how students will be moved toward obtaining specific objectives. This paper reports on five grade 10 Life Sciences teachers' planning for formative assessment in inquiry-based teaching. The ESRU framework guided this study. The ESRU cycle consists of four elements; the teacher elicits ( E ) questions to check students’ ideas, the student ( S ) response, the teacher recognises ( R ) the students’ response, and then uses ( U ) the student's response to promote learning. The ESRU comprises complete and incomplete cycles. A complete cycle is when all four elements are visible and incomplete if Elicit, Student response, and Recognize; or only Elicit and Student response. The lesson plan analysis looked at the ESRU cycles' elements in the questions planned to see if the questions were focused on the epistemic or conceptual dimensions. It also looked at how the entire lesson was planned. This research is a part of a more extensive qualitative study where data was collected through lesson observations, interviews, and lesson plans. The study was conducted to describe teachers’ formative assessment practices in inquiry-based pedagogy. This paper reports only on lesson plans. One lesson plan was requested per teacher. Participants were purposively selected based on their teaching of the subject and conveniently sampled according to their proximity to the researcher’s residence. Findings from all five teachers are as follows; when planning a lesson, it was evident that the five teachers planned for FA. In terms of ESRU, Eliciting and Using strategies were evident in the planned questions. The S tudent’s response was not included when planning since it is the students’ responses during the lesson and can only be captured when the teaching is happening. The R ecognising strategies were also not included in the lesson plans since they depend on learners’ responses. Four teachers planned more questions focused on epistemic than conceptual structures. The findings signal that there is still a need to train teachers to plan lessons that focus equally on conceptual and epistemic dimensions.