Pre-Service Preschool Teachers’ Opinions about the Formative Assessment

 

ABSTRACT

Formative assessment is based on the principle of determining students’ learning needs and teaching them with their needs in mind. The main goal of formative feedback is to strengthen students’ knowledge, specific skills, understanding in certain contents, and general skills such as problem solving. The aim of this study is to determine pre-service preschool teachers’ opinions about the use of formative assessment. This is a case study, a qualitative research method. This study was conducted with 63 pre-service teachers who were juniors in the education faculty of a public university in the west of Turkey’s Black Sea Region in the 2016-2017 academic year. The study data were collected using an opinion form which included open-ended questions as well as interview questions. Pre-service teachers’ written explanations to the open-ended questions were analyzed using content analysis, a qualitative analysis method. In addition, the study used descriptive analysis to assess the data that were collected during interviews with the purpose of obtaining further information. The research results show that a majority of pre service teachers’ had positive opinions about formative assessment. They stated that formative assessment has many advantages such as enhancing efficiency, providing experience and self-evaluation.