Formative Assessment Essay

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Assessment for Learning The term “formative evaluation” was first used by Michael Scriven (1967) in connection with curriculum and teaching, but it was Bloom, Hastings, and Madaus (1971) who gave the term its generally accepted current meaning. They defined summative evaluation tests as those tests given at the end of episodes of teaching (units, courses, etc.) for the purpose of grading or certifying students, or for evaluating the effectiveness of a curriculum, in contrast with “another type of evaluation which all who are involved - student, teacher, curriculum maker - would welcome because they find it so useful in helping them improve what they wish to do” (p. 117). They labeled this formative evaluation. The language Bloom et al. used obscures the fact that the distinction between formative and summative applies to how the data from assessments are used, rather than to the assessments themselves (Wiliam and Black, 1996). More recently, the term assessment for learning has become increasingly popular (Broadfoot et al., 1999), although this term often describes the purpose of an assessment (which may be just an aspiration) rather than the function it actually fulfills. Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall and Wiliam (2004) clarified the distinction between “formative assessment” and “assessment for learning” as follows: Assessment for learning is any assessment for which the first priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting students’ learning.[…] An assessment activity can help learning if it provides information to be used as feedback, by teachers, and by their students in assessing themselves and each other, to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. Such assessment becomes “formative assessment” when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching work to meet learning needs. (p. 8) In this

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