The students carried out an alternative assessment of the unit and helped plan ways to report their learning to parents. An integrated science unit on space was taught in second grade while the third grade studied dental health. Participating teachers analyzed data by looking for patterns, commonalities, and unique ideas in the students' responses. Information on how students think their learning should be reported to parents resulted. The second study describes a chemistry unit, a biology unit, and a human anatomy and physiology unit taught in high school.
Teamwork is cited as the key to understanding the experiments.
Teachers learned to intervene less frequently and with care. The authors noted that the more academically inclined students benefited while the less academically inclined wanted more structure. Grades kindergarten to two and three to six participated in the study. Surveying an eighth grade physical science class indicated an absence of higher level processing and critical thinking in the fourth study. However, involving students in an alternative assessment dialog focused the students attention on invalid teacher assumptions about student abilities while improving their understanding of alternative assessment.