Guiding Formative Action: The Role of a Pedagogical Roadmap
In this blog we present the pedagogical roadmap as a concrete tool for teachers to determine when it is useful to organise a process of formative action in the classroom. Formative action refers to the behaviour of teachers and learners in the pedagogical process (see Figure 1). In this process, teachers gather targeted and specific […]
No Time for Formative Action
Many schools and institutions are working with formative action and many teachers are enthusiastic about it. Not only do they recognise that it can motivate pupils or students, but they also see how it can help them adapt to students needs, for example, or solve other day-to-day problems. But I also often hear the sigh: […]
Building Thinking Classrooms in History
In his book Building Thinking Classrooms , Canadian mathematician Peter Liljedahl argues that too little thinking is done by students in the average lesson. Often, instruction is given by the teacher, practised together and then copied independently by students. All thinking steps are thereby made by the teacher; students often only imitate. According to Liljedahl, […]
No pain, no gain – on desirable difficulties
Imagine you teach chemistry and want your students to learn the periodic table so that they can analyse chemical behaviour more easily. You therefore want them to memorise the periodic table. However, you also know that students are not going to do this on their own, so you motivate them by giving them a test. […]
Developing a sense for quality
Formative action is goal-oriented action, but how can students assess if they have achieved a particular goal? When you pass a ball, and it reaches the receiver, then you can tell from the result whether you did well or not. The feedback is implicit, and also easy to grasp. But with many academic assignments, the […]
How can formative action contribute to self-regulated learning?
Pupils or students are, as a rule, beginners; the knowledge and skills they have to master are mostly new. This in itself is not a problem. However, the tendency of pupils and students to under- and overestimate themselves is.[1] This leads, for instance, to students starting learning too late or they mistakenly think they already […]
