THE USE OF SELF-ASSESSMENT TO FACILITATE SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING IN MATHEMATICS BY HONG KONG SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

In a world that is constantly changing, the most important skill to acquire is learning how to learn. One of the aims of the education reform in Hong Kong is to help students to develop self-directed learning capabilities, leading to whole-person development and life-long learning. Self-directed learning refers to a process whereby the learner assumes a major responsibility for the initiation, planning, implementation and monitoring of their own learning. In this study, several self-assessment tools, introduced to the teachers, were used by the students in mathematics classrooms in order to facilitate students’ self-directed learning. The self-assessment tools included student reflective journals, think boards and mind maps. The purpose of this research is to explore ways to use guided self-assessment to build high quality self-directed learning processes in students, which will assist teachers and schools in producing successful and self-directed learners in mathematics. It also investigated the effectiveness of the intervention to enhance students’ mathematics capability. A total of 533 Secondary Three (S3) students in 16 classes from 6 schools took the pre- and post-tests. Out of the 533 students, 315 engaged in self-assessment with teachers’ guidance. The students were asked to reflect on what they had learned in class using those self-assessment tools. Pre- and post-tests were administrated before and after the intervention respectively to see if there was a difference in gain between the treatment group and control group. The treatment group made significantly greater gains than the control group (effect size=0.27). Also, 101 samples of student self-assessment work were analyzed to understand the nature of the reflective learning that took place. The analysis showed that many of the components of self-directed learning were found in their self-assessment work. The results tell us that self-directed learning facilitated by self-assessment is a viable pedagogy in mathematics for these S3 Hong Kong students. On the basis of this research, the use of student self-assessment to facilitate self-directed learning in other settings could be explored in the future. This study will guide future developments of interventions related to self-assessment and self-directed learning to enhance teaching and learning.