Rethinking teachers’ formative assessment practices within technology-enhanced classrooms

In this chapter, we deal with the role of digital technologies in reshaping teachers’ formative assessment (FA) practices. In particular, we present a model (the WHW-model) aimed at conceptualizing teachers’ FA practices supported by digital technologies. We adopt a socio-constructivist perspective on teaching and learning, which, in terms of assessment, moves from “assessment of learn- ing” to “assessment for learning” and even to “assessment as learning.” In the first part of the chapter, we progressively introduce the three dimensions that consti- tute the WHW-model: (1) the FA areas, to metaphorically locate teachers’ practices within four main categories of FA practices (the Where of FA); (2) the functionalities through which digital technologies can support FA processes (the How of FA); (3) the phases of FA, to locate teachers’ practices within the temporal line of pre-paration, paration, meta-paration and post-paration of any teaching and learning process (the When of FA). The second part of the chapter is devoted to highlighting the potential of the WHW-model to support the study of the evolving role of the teacher in the development of FA practices in digital technology-enhanced classrooms, by presenting paradigmatic examples aimed at operationalizing the model.