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Students’ mathematics learning and assessment are indispensable parts of curriculum despite issues with treating learning and assessment as separate entities, and have ongoing debates on the issues of fairness, reliability, and validity. Mathematics assessment can have some biases toward a group of students, resulting in good or bad achievements. There is a view that there is no single universal approach or tool that can assess what an individual has learned in mathematics. In this context, assessment has been used for promoting learning and certifying students’ qualification. The differential usage shows multiple purposes of assessment with different meanings and types in day-to-day classroom practices. While assessment is considered a core component of pedagogy, it should be properly integrated into teaching and learning activities (Cornard & Openo, 2018) and used to promote learning in different ways (Black et al., 2006; Dann, 2014). Assessment is the “systematic collection of information about student learning using time, knowledge, expertise, and resources available to inform decisions that affect student learning” (Walvoored, 2010, p. 2), engage students in tasks integrated into the whole learning process (Dochy, 2009; Macdonald, 2004). However, it should be supported by feedback mechanism to identify the gap between actual and desired performance (Shute, 2008; Van et al., 2012), guide the teaching and support students' learning (Joughin, 2009a).
In the Nepali context, assessment of learning is mostly done with paper-and-pen and fixed-hour written examinations. Assessment for learning is not a priority, rather most mathematics teachers use tests or exams as summative assessments of the students to provide grades. Assessment has not been a tool for learning mathematics. As a result, students’ performance in mathematics is low in Nepal (ERO, 2015, 2020). The situation was even further deteriorated during the COVID-19 pandemic due to closure of face-to-face classes.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic forced educational institutions shift the conventional system of education to distance and online modes. Educational institutions in Nepal and other places faced problems due to a need for adequate infrastructure, human resources, and internet connectivity (Pal et al., 2021). The center-based proctored examinations for assessing student learning was not possible due to physical and social distance with public health concerns. Therefore, schools and higher education institutions introduced online assessments in the country (CDC, 2019; MoE, 2020). For school education, the Curriculum Development Center (CDC) developed guidelines that for assessment introducing some formative assessment tools, like student participation, attendance, homework, project work, and other practical activities to assess students' learning achievements (CDC, 2019). However, the mathematics teachers were not trained to construct and apply formative assessment tools. This raised a question about whether the new practice of formative assessment tools improve students’ learning and achievement. The formative assessment practices adopted at the schools need evidences from research to address public concerns in terms of its impacts on students’ learning of mathematics. In this context, this study aimed to examine teachers' formative assessment practices in school-level mathematics in an online mode of instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective was to examine formative assessment practices and the effectiveness of different assessment strategies, such as assessment of, for, and as learning for the student. More specifically, this study answered the following research questions: