Research Basis

A study was conducted to examine the influence of formative assessment practices on primary grades students’ number sense skills using the internet-based formative assessment tool, AMC Anywhere.

“The data analyzed in this study came from teacher-participants in the Assessment Practices to Support Mathematics Learning and Understanding for Students (APLUS) professional development project funded by the Department of Education’s Mathematics Science Partnership grant program.

The APLUS project provided teachers with approximately 70 hours of learning experiences related to the use of the internet-based formative assessment tool, AMC Anywhere, (Richardson, 2012), and the accompanying Developing Number Concepts curricular resources (Richardson, 1998). Participants in this study were 906 teachers and their 13,567 students in Grades K–2.

Results indicated there were statistically significant relationships between the use of formative assessment practices and primary grades students’ achievement on number sense tasks using the internet-based tool, AMC Anywhere. Further, students from impoverished settings, larger schools, and students who were assessed more frequently were associated with greater growth than their peers.”

—Polly, D., Wang, C. Martin, C. S., Lambert, R. G., Pugalee, D. K., Stephan, M., & Ringer, C. (2014, April). Examining the influence of professional development on primary students’ mathematical achievement. Paper presented at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Philadelphia, PA.

Full Reports

• The Influence of Formative Assessment in Primary Grades on Students’ Number Sense Achievement
• The Influence of Professional Development on Primary Teachers’ TPACK and Use of Formative Assessment
• Perspectives and Practices of Elementary Teachers Using an Internet-Based Formative Assessment Tool: The Case of Assessing Mathematics Concepts
• Primary Grades Teachers’ Instructional Decisions During Online Mathematics Professional Development Activities
• Primary Grades Teachers’ Fidelity of Teaching Practices during Mathematics Professional Development
• Supporting the Enactment of Standards-based Mathematics Pedagogies: The Cases of the CoDE-I and APLUS Projects
• Using the AMC Anywhere Web-Based Assessment System to Examine Primary Students’ Understanding of Number Sense