Samenvatting

The value of the process of formative assessment is greatly diminished if it is not goal-directed and oriented towards students’ long-term development. This implies that teachers need deep pedagogical content knowledge. As a way to scaffold teachers’ use of pedagogical content knowledge when designing formative assessment, learning progressions have been suggested. Learning progressions can support teachers in developing goal-directed formative assessments, interpreting student responses within the context of the learning progression and identifying appropriate next steps in learning. Therefore, the goal of this research was to develop and evaluate a professional development trajectory in which vocational education teachers collaboratively developed a learning progression for their vocational education program, in connection with formative assessment activities. Four vocational education teacher teams based in the Netherlands developed a learning progression for a core idea of the occupation they are educating for (e.g., nurse, travel agent) and developed and experimented with formative assessment activities connected to this learning progression. Results highlight the value of taking a student perspective when developing a learning progression, using personas, gathering student input, and identifying and disentangling hurdles that students encounter during their learning pathways. To connect formative assessment activities to the learning progression, zooming in and zooming out appeared to be necessary, but difficult. Teachers might need to get familiar with formative assessment in their classrooms before engaging in the development of a learning progression.