Explaining mathematics teachers’ class test design and its relation to feedback: an explorative study in Germany and Italy

Abstract

Class tests are a crucial part of written classroom assessment in mathematics. They are designed by teachers, can address summative and formative purposes and can be expected to provide feedback that informs teaching and supports student learning. This potential seems often underused, and little is known about criteria guiding teachers’ design decisions. This binational interview study conducted with secondary school teachers from Germany and Italy investigates how they design class tests, which criteria they apply, and how feedback is considered across different phases of assessment. To situate interview analyses within teachers’ professional context, we present a conceptual framework that conceives class tests as part of an assessment cycle linking operationalisation, measurement, validation, and feedback. With reference to this framework, results from qualitative interview analyses indicate that task selection is mainly guided by implicit and routinised criteria, is only loosely connected to formal competence frameworks or cognitive-demand considerations and that institutional, collegial, and socio-cultural influences strongly shape teachers’ decisions in both countries. Though teachers often express diagnostic intentions, feedback is rarely considered explicitly during test design and tends to emerge mainly during correction and restitution.