ارزیابی سازنده در آموزش حسابداری و برخی از شواهد اولیه در استفاده از آن برای تعیین توالی آموزشی

Formative assessment (FA) provides instructors and students with feedback to improve learning. Across a variety of education settings FA is one of the most effective classroom interventions for improving student learning outcomes. Yet the accounting education literature is almost devoid of any work related to FA. One barrier for developing FA in accounting education is the significant background knowledge needed to implement FA successfully. The purpose of this paper is to provide some of that background. The paper includes conceptual discussion from the general education literature to explain how FA improves learning and discussion of research that has identified features that affect the efficacy of FA practice. One of these features is how instructors use FA data to adjust instruction. An empirical study illustrates that accounting educators can use FA data to inform a decision about instructional sequencing. Instructional sequencing principles have been used to develop new accounting curricula and courses, and accounting education research has used empirical data to inform an instructional sequencing decision. The current study tests, using a sample of introductory accounting students, alternate versions of two FA tasks to determine which version is better for identifying deficiencies in student learning outcomes. Results suggest that one version of each task is better for identifying deficiencies, but an adjustment to instructional sequencing may be needed to ensure efficacy of one of the tasks, depending on how the FA practice is implemented.

The accounting education literature lacks a sizable body of work on education assessment. Assessment is a process that results in an evaluation of students’ achieved learning (Sadler, 1989, Scriven, 1967 and Taras, 2005). Assessment of learning outcomes that is used to assign grades or for certification is called summative assessment (SA); assessment that provides feedback to instructors and students to improve learning is called formative assessment (FA). Theoretically, assessment can be uniquely summative, ending in the evaluation.1 However, formative assessment inherently also includes the evaluative judgment2; thus formative assessment can be conceived as FA = SA + Feedback (Taras, 2005). In a series of accounting education literature reviews covering the period 1991–2009, only 48 of the more than 1100 articles were about assessment ( Apostolou et al., 2010, Apostolou et al., 2001, Rebele et al., 1998, Watson et al., 2003 and Watson et al., 2007). The majority of the assessment papers (40 of the 48) related to outcomes assessment. The dearth of FA articles in the accounting education literature is problematic because FA has proven effective across a wide range of education settings. Documented improvements in learning outcomes are generally larger with FA than with other education interventions for students ranging from 5-years old to university undergraduates, in a variety of subjects, and over several countries (Black & William, 1998a). A range of studies indicate innovations that strengthen the practice of formative assessment produce statistically significant learning gains, where learning gains “are measured by comparing the average improvements in the test scores of pupils involved in an innovation with the range of scores that are found for typical groups of pupils on these same tests” (Black & William, 1998a, p. 150). No matter how attractive it sounds, adopting FA requires substantial background knowledge about FA (Heritage, 2007). Generally, responsibility for developing and implementing FA practice is considered the work of the individual instructor who must find his or her own ways of integrating FA into the classroom experience (Black & William, 1998a). The purpose of this paper is to cover some of the groundwork needed to develop FA in accounting education. The paper has three parts. The first part provides a conceptual discussion of how FA improves learning. Conceptual understanding is challenging to develop because the general education literature uses numerous terms referring to the same, similar, or related ideas (Black & William, 1998a), lacks a single well-accepted definition of FA (Black and William, 1998a and Heritage, 2007), one of the most frequently adopted definitions is highly ambiguous (Taras, 2005, Taras, 2007 and Taras, 2009), and there are two distinct ways of conceiving the role of FA in improving learning (Taras, 2007). Accounting educators can use the general conceptual discussion from this paper to adapt FA to a variety of courses and learning objectives. The second part identifies two features of FA practice that meta-analyses of assessment research suggest significantly affect learning outcomes: (1) the frequency of assessment (Bangert-Drowns et al., 1991b, Dempster, 1991 and Dempster, 1992); and (2) the type of feedback provided to students (Bangert-Drowns et al., 1991a, Black and William, 1998b, Dempster, 1991, Dempster, 1992 and Tunstall and Gipps, 1996). Accounting educators can avoid “reinventing the wheel” by incorporating features of FA with proven efficacy into their FA practice. The third part is a study that builds on research indicating systematic FA was effective only when teachers used FA performance data to adjust instruction (Fuchs, Fuchs, Hamlett, & Stecker, 1991). It was not the quantity of adjustments teachers made, but the nature of the adjustments that significantly impacted learning outcomes. One of the adjustments that enhanced the efficacy of FA was teachers’ use of feedback about students’ performance to encourage students’ motivation to learn. Background provided in this paper also suggests FA feedback plays an important role in motivating students to improve learning. However, generalization of the Fuchs et al. (1991) study to accounting education is not directly possible. In accounting education development of FA tests, interpretation of FA data, and selection of adjustments to teaching likely to enhance the efficacy of FA practice remain the responsibility of the individual instructor. Fuchs et al. (1991) provided teachers in their study with a measurement system that produced tests the teachers used to implement systematic FA. The teachers who made adjustments that impacted the efficacy of the FA practice also were guided by an expert system that helped the teachers interpret FA data and that suggested possible adjustments to instruction. Both the measurement system and the expert system were specifically developed by the researchers for the K-12 math education context of the study. The purpose of my study is to illustrate that accounting educators can use FA data to determine if an adjustment in instructional sequencing is needed to ensure the efficacy of FA tasks for providing students with feedback. Instructional sequencing refers to the order in which content is covered and instructional activities occur. Accounting educators have used instructional sequencing principles to restructure entire accounting curricula (Ainsworth & Plumlee, 1993) and to develop new approaches to the intermediate accounting course (Jennings, 1998). Accounting education researchers have used empirical data to inform instructional sequencing decisions, specifically whether it was more effective to use case materials before or after a lecture (Phillips & Vaidyanathan, 2004). My study examines the efficacy of two FA tasks. The context of the study is an introductory accounting course in which student performance data from two FA tasks is used to identify learning outcome deficiencies as a means of helping students recognize the need to improve how they engage with assigned outside-of-class learning tasks. Helping students recognize the need to improve learning is the first step in motivating improved learning. I examined student performance on two FA tasks after students had the opportunity to work on assigned outside-of-class learning tasks before in-class instruction occurred. I tested student performance on alternate versions of the two assessment tasks that evaluated closely related, but different knowledge. One version of each task provided course content that was not provided in the other version of the task. The content provided was the same across the two tasks. Students performed better on both tasks when the course content was provided in the task. Worse performance on both tasks when course content was not provided signifies tasks that better captured a deficiency in students’ knowledge. It seems obvious that not providing course content in a task results in a task that is more effective at identifying gaps in students’ knowledge, but this would be a premature conclusion. All students in the study performed a version of both tasks. Results demonstrate students performed better on a second assessment task that did not provide the course content, if the first assessment task did provide the content. Better performance on the second task occurred when one of the tasks was second, but not when the other task was second. The study concludes with discussion of the implications for instructional sequencing when using the assessment tasks from my study. The remainder of this paper is as follows. Section two presents the conceptual discussion. Section three discusses assessment practices that have proven effective. Section four sets up the study. Section five describes the study method. Section six presents analysis of results. Section seven discusses results, suggestions for future research, and conclusions.

Providing the names of the elements in the classification task and the recall task reduced the efficacy of both tasks for providing introductory accounting students with feedback. Feedback should identify relevant gaps in students’ knowledge. I examined the efficacy of the classification task (no names) and recall task (no names) by comparing students’ performance on these tasks to students’ performance on an alternate version of the two tasks (names provided). Lower scores on the FA tasks (no names) than on the FA tasks (names provided) suggest the FA tasks (no names) were better for identifying relevant deficiencies in students’ knowledge. Lower scores on the classification task (no names) imply that students had not learned how to use the element definitions as classification rules. Lower scores on the recall task (no names) imply students did not know the relationship between the algebraic equations and the financial statements. It may be necessary to adjust instructional sequencing to ensure efficacy of the classification task (no names) for providing feedback. Instructional sequencing includes decisions about the order in which teaching, assessment and providing students with feedback from assessment will occur. Provided content reduces efficacy of an FA task if students’ performance on the task is better absent any opportunity to improve students’ learning. When FA is frequent, content that is not provided in an assessment task may be provided in a prior assessment task, via instruction or in feedback from a prior assessment. If content provided prior to students’ performing an assessment task improves performance on the task, instructional sequencing can be adjusted to not provide the content and ensure efficacy of the task for identifying the relevant knowledge gaps. I examined student performance on a second assessment task (no names) when names were provided in the prior assessment task. Scores on the recall task (no names) were not impacted by providing the names of the elements in the prior assessment task. However, scores on the classification task (no names) were better when the names of the elements were provided in the prior assessment task. The purpose of my study was to illustrate how accounting educators can use FA feedback to inform instructional sequencing. Instructional sequences that prevent providing the names of the elements to students prior to assessing them with the classification task (no names) will ensure the classification task is useful for identifying the relevant knowledge gaps. Adjustments to instructional sequencing will depend on how FA is integrated with instruction. For example, one instructional sequence that should prevent better performance on the classification task is to assess students with both the recall task and the classification task before providing feedback to students or providing any instruction that helps students learn how to engage with the related assigned learning tasks. If, however, a teaching plan calls for assessing students with one task at a time, providing students with feedback about their performance on that task, and then providing instruction on how to do related learning tasks, instructors should sequence all activities related to the classification task before activities related to the recall task.