5. Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning

5.2.1 Demonstrate an understanding of the purpose of providing timely and appropriate feedback to students about their learning.

5.3.1 Demonstrate understanding of assessment moderation and its application to support consistent and comparable judgements of student learning.

The focus in this paper is on what teachers can do to facilitate learning, which is often done in most areas of mathematics but has been elusive in the topic of proof: consistent and readily understood marking, meaningful feedback, and opportunity to apply that feedback.

Accomplishing objectives

5.2.1 - This paper highlights areas of deficiency or difficulty in providing appropriate feedback, and it proposes a framework and approach for addressing that difficulty in a way the teacher can tailor to a particular situation.

5.3.1 - The paper explicitly addresses the need for moderation in marking proofs, citing articles where researchers identified variation between teachers in assessing the seriousness of a given error. Furthermore, it noted that teachers acknowledged their assessments sometimes involved personal knowledge of the student to gauge the cause of the error.

Learning impacts

Opportunity for me to apply the concepts in this paper will come. It will be best rolled out at the start of the topic, with students given access to it, and taught as a specific lesson - with examples and dress rehearsal in self-grading a sample and grading a proof by one another.