Assessment in practice

12 Assessment in practice

I Improving formative assessment

Nic Howes and John Hopkin What is formative assessment?

Formative assessment is often referred to as the most important aspect of assessment, yet it is sometimes unclear what it is,and especially what it looks like in practice. Formative assessment of students’ work informs future teaching and learning by giving feedback to students and teachers. The term embraces a broad range of day- to-day assessment strategies: for example,whole-class question and answer sessions or marking students’ classwork. Formative assessment helps us to understand and make judgements about what students know,understand and can do,what their strengths,weaknesses and misconceptions are and what the next steps in their learning should be for them to make progress.

The counterpart of formative assessment is summative assessment,a term which refers to less frequent assessment which looks back on students’ learning …: for example,at the end of a unit of work,when the assessments help establish students’ learning over a period of weeks and set targets for future improvements,… [or] the end of significant stages in a student’s education,such as end-of-Key Stage 3 teacher assessments,GCSE examinations and A-level examinations. The results of these summative assessments enter the public domain and are the focus of much comment outside the teaching and learning situation. The notional link between the two forms of assessment is that formative assessment helps teachers and students to follow a course of teaching and learning in the classroom,which leads each student to his or her best possible level of achievement in the next summative assessment.

Why consider formative assessment? Formative assessment is an essential part of effective teaching and learning. All

teachers regularly use some of its strategies,quite possibly without recognizing how they contribute to formative assessment. It would be a valuable exercise for teachers and departments to consider which formative assessment strategies they use now, and which others could be adopted. We would argue that using a broad range of formative assessment strategies is good practice. The essential value of recognizing formative assessment is that this will clarify the purpose of work on which students and their teachers spend much time and energy. This clarification will make it easier

ASSESSMENT IN PRACTICE

for teachers to help their students and parents to understand the purpose of tasks and how they are making progress. It will also make it easier for teachers to prepare docu- mentation for inspections.

How does formative assessment work? Teachers can use many strategies to ensure effective formative assessment. The

strategies described here are developed in more detail,and with further exemplifica- tion,in Assessment in Practice (Hopkin et al. 2000). The strategies are complementary and may operate concurrently.

Questioning, intervening and reviewing These are ongoing strategies which teachers use to monitor students’ learning and

inform further teaching. For example,many lessons start with a quick review of work already covered. This might take the form of a short oral question and answer session which reassures the teacher that the planned lesson is taking place on a firm foundation of prior learning.

Observation of students’ responses to work on a day-to-day basis

Example 1

A teacher noted that drawing a pie chart took a Year 8 class more time than the usefulness of the result warranted,because the students had difficulty converting percentages to degrees. The adaptation in the light of this observation was to use pie chart scales (transparent plastic circles marked in percentages) for this operation in future lessons.

Example 2

A teacher spent part of a Year 11 GCSE lesson explaining the difference between urbanization,counter-urbanization and re-urbanization. A subsequent homework based on a GCSE question asked students to explain what is meant by ‘rural depopu- lation’; many students responded that rural depopulation equals urbanization. When the teacher returned the marked work to students an opportunity was taken to point out that rural depopulation is not necessarily due to urbanization. The example given was that it may be due to people leaving one rural area for another which offers better prospects (e.g. the Highland clearances).

Sharing learning intentions with students Without understanding what teachers want them to learn and why,students do not

have all the information they need to work effectively,or to evaluate their own prog- ress. For teachers,clear learning intentions (or objectives) which are shared with students support their progress and are the cornerstone of good formative assess- ment. For example:

ASPECTS OF TEACHING SECONDARY GEOGRAPHY