College of Education & Behavioral Sciences;
Department of Teacher Education & Curriculum Studies
Assignment submitted for the course Seminar II
A Systematic Review on Mathematics Teachers Conceptions and
Practices of Continuous Classroom Assessment
By Melaku Takele (PhD Student)
July 2021
Abstract
ii
Introduction
Assessment has an influential power in education at any level. Focusing on assessment is vital
for the progress of teaching and learning processes because it delivers real-time information to
help current teaching and learning in individual classrooms. It is used to determine how well the
students learning process is happening and at the same time provide the information needed to
the teaching learning process that can lead to the progress of the classroom instruction and
settings. In schools, assessment is concerned with observing learners and collecting information
about those observations (MoE, 2018). Thus, assessment is defined as a way of observing and
collecting information to evaluate learning outcomes and identify students' misconceptions and
difficulties in learning (Monteiro, Mata and Santos, 2021). Furthermore, Black & William (1998)
also defined the general term assessment as all those activities undertaken by teachers and their
students in assessing themselves to provide information as feedback to modify teaching and
learning activities.
For teachers to gather knowledge of their students' learning, assessment plays a crucial role
(Cizek, 2010). When this assessment is truly in the hands of teachers it is called classroom
assessment. Thus, classroom assessment is part of the teaching-learning process and it helps
teachers to make sound decisions on the students' progress. Teachers' approach to using their
classroom assessments as learning tools is both to provide students with feedback on their
learning progress and to guide the correction of learning errors. Therefore, classroom assessment
is a systematic approach to formative evaluation (evaluations for learning often ungraded and
informal), used by teachers to determine how much and how well students are learning.
Classroom assessment techniques which use different designs, including observation,
questioning, and paper and pencil tests or quizzes, to measure student learning, usually on a daily
basis and other informal assessment tools provide key information during the process of teaching
and learning so that changes can be made as necessary. Thus, teachers have a wide range of
classroom assessment methods to employ which provide them access to powerful assessment of
student learning (Ohlsen, 2007). Classroom assessment is broader and it comprises all activities
that permit teachers to find out where their students are at a particular moment in terms of
comprehension of the subject and to give information on what is going right and wrong
(Veldhuis & den Heuvel-Panhuizen, 2015). Classroom assessment for student learning
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predominantly emphasizes formative assessment but also addresses other types of assessment,
such as helping teachers understand standardized tests and how to use them productively in the
classroom (Randel, et.al, 2011).
Classroom assessment serves many purposes for teachers including identification of student
special needs, student motivation, and instructional effectiveness. The central purpose of
classroom assessment is to empower both teachers and their students to improve the quality of
learning in the classroom through different approaches like "learner-cantered, teacher-directed,
mutually beneficial, formative, context-specific, and firmly rooted in good practice" (Angelo &
Cross, 1993). Therefore, classroom assessment has been given many different names such as
‘informal assessment’, ‘instructionally embedded assessment’, ‘didactical assessment’,
‘assessment for learning’, or ‘formative assessment’ which is intended to support the teaching
and learning process (Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Becker, 2003). What all these descriptive
phrases have in common is that they refer to an assessment that allows the teacher to make wellinformed decisions about further instruction and so leads to instruction that sufficiently fits to the
desires of the students (Veldhuis & den Heuvel-Panhuizen, 2015).
The above discussion indicates that classroom assessment is carried out mainly by teachers on a
continuous basis while teaching and learning is going on and it is vital to improving students'
learning and teachers' teaching. The main purpose of teachers using classroom assessment is to
assess student's skills and understanding to make informed instructional decisions, and to support
learning and teaching (Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Becker, 2003). Besides continuous
classroom assessment is used to provide information on learners' achievement and progress; to
ascertain the formation of all-round profiles of students at all levels and set the direction for
ongoing improvement in the teaching-learning process (TGE, 1994). Such use of assessment for
formative purposes differs from a summative assessment that is aimed at making decisions about
certification, and from a diagnostic assessment that is focused on identifying reasons for
individual students' difficulties (Van der Kleij, Vermeulen, Schildkamp, & Eggen, 2015).
Therefore, continuous classroom assessments are formative assessments that are carried out by
mainly teachers and also involve students in the lesson of daily activity (Airasian and Russell,
2007).
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For teachers to teach students in a good way, they have to know what students can and cannot
do. Thus, knowledge regarding assessment work is a basis for the conception of assessment.
Knowledge about purpose of assessment, techniques of assessment, and the content of the
assessment work are crucial in constructing the teachers’ conception of assessment. Through the
collection of knowledge of assessment, teachers’ conception of assessment is then can be
constructed as the ground belief of the nature of the assessment to be conducted in classrooms
(Mustafa & Manaf, 2019). Specifically, teachers shuold have at least be aware of theoretical and
practical aspects of continuous classroom assessment concepts and skills such as selecting the
most appropriate continuous classroom assessment techniques; using appropriate instructions
while providing exercises in the classrooms; aligning CCA with the minimum learning
competencies set in the curriculum; and providing constructive feedback which are basic aspect of
CCA (Mamaru, 2014; MoE, 2018).
Teachers awareness of these aspects can enable them to enhance their capacity of executing
continuous classroom assessment. These issues influence the teachers’ teaching practices and help
them to plan, monitor and evaluate the students’ learning process. Especially in mathematics
education which is the practice of teaching and learning mathematics in a manner of solving
problems involving learning the algorithms and formulae needed for computations,
understanding these basic aspects and concepts of continuous classroom assessments and
practicing it in a collaborative approach with their students in a classroom is the best way of
measuring student's meaningful understanding of the content. Therefore, the conception and
practices of teachers about continuous classroom assessment in mathematics classrooms at
primary schools have to be substantially reviewed. Even though many reviews and studies were
undertaken on conceptions and practices of teachers and students about assessment at different
places and times (Brown, 2004; Ohlsen, 2007; Pereira, et. al., 2017; Mustafa & Manaf, 2019),
this review is different from these because it focuses on synthesizing studies conducted on
continuous classroom assessment understanding and practices of primary school mathematics
teaches. Thus, the attention of this review lies on precisely this part of teachers' conceptions and
practices for their students' improvement of learning and understanding of the content best.
Hence this paper attempts to critically review the conceptions and practices of mathematics
teachers’ continuous classroom assessment activities at primary schools.
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Objective and Guiding Questions
The general objective of this review is to identify and synthesize the findings of major kinds of
research on mathematics teachers’ conceptions and practices of continuous classroom assessment
(CCA) techniques in primary schools. The research questions guiding this review are:
1. What is the conception of primary school mathematics teachers about continuous
classroom assessments?
2. What is the status of primary school mathematics teachers’ practices of continuous
classroom assessments?
Based on these research questions, existing studies related to the mathematics continuous
classroom assessment conceptions and practices in primary schools were reviewed to map the
current research contributions.
Methods
After identifying the theoretical concepts and techniques of continuous classroom assessment in
primary school mathematics education, thematic searches were performed to identify scientific
articles, book chapters, or books that address fundamental aspects concerning these issues.
Specifically, this review followed Petticrew and Roberts' guide of systematic review in the social
sciences. The method has multiple steps including defining research questions, identifying search
strategy, conducting the literature search, formulating inclusion criteria, evaluating study quality,
and extracting data from the included articles (Petticrew and Roberts, 2006, p. 284). In addition,
different procedures and templates from Josette Bettany-Saltikov's step-by-step guide to
systematic review were also referred to use for presenting the results of the included studies
based on the title, abstract, and on reading the full paper (Bettany-Saltikov, 2012).
Search and Selection
Papers for the review were searched by logging in to Jimma University library and searching
subscribed journals from E-resources category. Then from list of many data bases, JSTOR is
clicked on, opened the JSTOR home page and again get on Advanced Search to search journals,
primary sources, and books related to the topic of review ((Primary school mathematics assessment)
AND la:(eng OR en) AND disc:(education-discipline)) and got 1,816 results at the first step. Then
after, the search is modified to minimize the result to get relevant resources that are suitable for
review. In this second step additional keywords such as 'frequent', 'continuous' 'classroom',
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'formative', 'summative' ‘perception’ and ‘practice’ were written in ‘SEARCH WITHIN
RESULTS’ box and 45 results were obtained ((Primary school mathematics assessment) AND
la:(eng OR en) AND disc:(education-discipline) AND ('frequent', 'continuous' 'classroom',
'formative', 'summative', ‘perception’, ‘practice’)).
The different steps of the search process, including which parts of the articles, were examined,
the inclusion criteria and the resulting selected articles are presented in Figure 1. Search and
selection were conducted in July 2021, which was also the cut-off date for published articles.
The year 2015 was chosen as a start date, for the purpose of considering latest published articles.
Additional searches were also made using Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/) to
download important articles listed in references of other articles used earlier for different related
studies. Studies were excluded if (a) the language was not English (k ¼ 3), (b) the source was
falsely linked (k ¼ 2), (c) the study was with students in K–12, rather than higher education (k ¼
23), (d) the study was with teachers rather than students (k ¼ 5), or (e) the paper was an editorial
or theoretical, rather than empirical (k ¼ 4).
Step 1 (Advanced Search)
 All fields
 Content I can access
 Articles
 English
 2015-2021
 Education
1816
Step 2 (1st selection)
Key words ('frequent', 'continuous'
45
retrieved
'classroom', 'formative', 'summative',
‘perception’, ‘practice’)
Step 3 (2nd selection)
5
Finally, 32 articles were selected for inclusion in the review. These articles included (quasi)
experiments as well as descriptive studies. While reading the methods and results sections all
relevant information concerning the continuous classroom assessment and its results were
Identification
extracted from the articles.
Step 1 (Advanced Search) (1816)
 All fields
 Content I can access
 Articles
 English
 2015-2021
 Education
Additional articles identified
through Google Scholar
citation search (25)
Step 2 (1st selection) (45)
Included
Eligibility
Screening
Key words ('frequent', 'continuous' 'classroom', 'formative',
'summative', ‘perception’, ‘practice’)
Figure 1. Graphic summary of the search and selection process.
Abstracts and titles were read to determine each item’s relevance to the research questions
identified above. “Snowball sampling” techniques was also conducted, that can be rejected the
references sections of relevant studies to identify additional, relevant studies.
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Method of Analysis
The analysis performed in this review is of a qualitative nature. The main purpose is to identify
and synthesize the findings of major kinds of research on mathematics teachers’ conceptions and
practices of continuous classroom assessment (CCA) techniques in primary schools. It was
therefore not primarily concerned with the relative strength of these techniques or the amount of
scientific evidence substantiating each of them.
The reason for taking this stance is partly the restricted number of studies on this topic in total
(and for individual factors in particular), but also the great heterogeneity of the studies, which
(together with the scarcity of data provided in most articles) excludes the possibility to perform a
meta-analysis. The approach adopted is therefore a narrative content analysis (Dochy, 2006),
where it is the breadth of different categories that is of interest.
In a first step, the different articles were read in order to determine whether they contained
relevant information and whether they fulfilled the inclusion criteria. In a second step, for each
selected article the following information was extracted and entered into a table: sample,
research design, procedures, findings, and conclusions (see Table 1). Thirdly, the information
provided by the different studies was compared in order to explore possible patterns. This
comparison was done for each of the parameters, for instance comparing the results of studies
with respect to research design, intervention time, etc. All steps were performed independently
by the researcher and then compared and discussed.
Results
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References
Airasian, P., and Russell M., (2007). Classroom Assessment: Concepts and Applications (6th
ed). New York: McGrath Hill.
Angelo, T.A., & Cross, K.P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college
teachers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bettany-Saltikov, J. (2012). How to do a Systematic Literature Review in Nursing: A step-bystep guide.
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom
assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), pp.139- 148.
Brown G., (2004). Teachers' Conceptions of Assessment: Implications for Policy and
Professional Development. Assessment in Education Principles Policy and Practice,
11(3), pp. 301-318.
Cizek, G. J. (2010). An introduction to formative assessment: History, characteristics, and
challenges. In H. L. Andrade & G. J. Cizek (Eds.), Handbook of formative assessment
(pp. 3-17). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Dochy, F. (2006). A guide for writing scholarly articles or reviews for the Educational Research
Review. Educational Research Review, 4(1-2), 1-21.
Harlen, W., & Winter, JC. (2004). The development of assessment for learning: learning from
the case of science and mathematics. Language Testing, 21 (3), 390 - 408.
https://doi.org/10.1191/0265532204lt289oa
https://citl.illinois.edu/citl-101/teaching-learning/resources/teaching-strategies/classroom-assessment-techniques(cats) (3/7/21)
Mamaru, A. (2014). Classroom Assessment Manual for Primary and Secondary School
Teachers. In NEAEA, Addis Ababa (Issue January).
https://www.slideshare.net/chanyalewdobkin/classroom-assessment-manual?from_action=save
MoE
(2018). Mathematics Continuous
Grade 7 and Grade 8. Adama.
Classroom Assessment Handbook
Training Manual for
Monteiro V., Mata L. and Santos NN. (2021). Assessment Conceptions and Practices:
Perspectives of Primary School Teachers and Students. Front. Educ. 6:631185.
doi: 10.3389/feduc.2021.631185
Mustafa, M. B. M., & Manaf, U. K. A. (2019). Educators’ Conception of Student Assessment
and Their Practices in an Institution of Education in MARA. International Journal of
Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 9(10), 292–300.
Ohlsen, M. T. (2007). Classroom assessment practices of secondary school members of
NCTM. American Secondary Education, 4-14.
8
Pereira, D., Niklasson, L., and Assunção M. F. (2017). Students' perceptions of assessment: a
comparative analysis between Portugal and Sweden. Higher Education, 73(1); pp. 153173.
Petticrew, M., & Roberts, H. (2006). Systematic reviews in the social sciences: A practical guide. John
Wiley & Sons. https://fcsalud.ua.es/en/portal-de-investigacion/documentos/tools-for-the-
bibliographic-research/guide-of-systematic-reviews-in-social-sciences.pdf (12/07/2021)
Randel, B., Beesley, A. D., Apthorp, H., Clark, T.F., Wang, X., Cicchinelli, L. F., & Williams, J.
M. (2011).Classroom Assessment for Student Learning: The impact on elementary
school mathematics in the Central Region. (NCEE 2011-4005). Washington, DC:
National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of
Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.
TGE (1994). Education and Training Policy. Addis Ababa: Ministry of Education, St. George
printing press.
Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, M., & Becker, J. (2003). Towards a didactic model for assessment
design in mathematics education. In Second international handbook of mathematics
education (pp. 689-716). Springer, Dordrecht.
Veldhuis, M., Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, M., Vermeulen, J. A., & Eggen, T. H. J. M. (2013).
Teachers’ use of classroom assessment in primary school mathematics education in the
Netherlands. CADMO, 21(2), 35-53.
Veldhuis, M., & den Heuvel-Panhuizen, V. (2015). Improving classroom assessment in primary
mathematics education in the Netherlands. In Proceedings of the Ninth Congress of the
European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (pp. 375-381).
9
Table 1. Studies on Mathematics Teachers Conceptions and Practices of Continuous Classroom
Assessment
Study
Sample Design
Procedure
Findings and conclusion
interpretations
Brantlinger,
A.
(2013).
Between
Politics
and
Equations: Teaching
Critical Mathematics
in
a
Remedial
Secondary.
Classroom American
Educational Research
Journal , 50(5) pp.
1050-1080
3.1 Studies included from searching and screening
The number of papers and studies at different points in the searching and screening processes
are summarised in Figure 3.1 It can be seen that the total number of papers screened was 343.
Table 3.1 indicates the source of the initial papers found and, for comparison, the source of the
studies that were included in data extraction.
Table 3.1 Results of initial search (343 papers)
Identification
Number (%)
Number included (%)
Two-stage screening
ERIC
One-stage screening
Electronic database
NFER, CRESST)
(ERSDAT,
Total
10
The criteria for excluding papers and the number excluded at all stages are given in Table 3.2. There
were 303 papers excluded, some being excluded for more than one reason, whilst 16 others were
unobtainable. Two papers were linked, and one was then excluded from the data extraction as a
separate item so that only one of these appears in the list of studies used in data extraction.
Table 2 Exclusion criteria and numbers excluded at all stages (not mutually exclusive)
Criteria (more than one can apply)
Criterion A
Number
of studies
Not summative assessment. Studies were excluded if information was
gathered for formative purposes only; aptitude tests and special needs
assessments were also excluded.
Criterion B
Criterion C
Criterion D
Criterion E
Not assessment by teachers. Studies were excluded if they reported
assessment of teachers or studies of school evaluation; also excluded were
studies of teacher administered tasks or portfolios that were graded
externally.
Not related to education in school. This excluded studies relating to college
students; higher education; nursing education or other vocational
education).
Not reporting impact of the process of assessment on students, teachers or
the curriculum. Studies were excluded if the impact reported was a result of
the outcome of the assessment and not the process.
Not research. Studies were excluded if they did not report empirical study of
particular procedures of assessment by teachers; also excluded were
handbooks and reviews and reports of instrument development or
description, without a report of their use.
In the screening process all papers were labelled either IN or OUT with the reasons for exclusion. In
addition, some papers, considered to be of particular relevance but excluded for one of these reasons,
were labelled as useful for the background discussion. Of the 42 papers labelled IN, the full texts of 16
could not be found, leaving 26 for the key wording stage. At this stage two further papers were
excluded, using the same criteria as above. In addition since the same data were used in two papers
these were linked, and one was subsequently excluded as a separate item with only one of them
included in the data extraction. Thus 23 studies remained in the systematic map and in-depth review.
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Particularly in Ethiopia, the ministry of education outlined seven national standards for teachers (MOE,
2012):
(MOE, (2012). Professional Standard for Ethiopian School Teachers)
1. Know students and how they learn
professional knowledge
2. Know the content and how to teach it
professional practice
3. Plan for and implement effective
teaching and learning
4. Create and maintain supportive and
safe learning environments
5. Assess, provide feedback and report on
student learning
professional engagement
6. Engage in professional learning
7. Engage professionally with colleagues,
parents/care givers and the community
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