Formative Assessment - Rationale and Practice

Rationale and Practice

There are several purposes to formative assessment:

• to provide feedback for teachers to modify subsequent learning activities and experiences;
• to identify and remediate group or individual deficiencies;
• to move focus away from achieving grades and onto learning processes, in order to increase self efficacy and reduce the negative impact of extrinsic motivation;
• to improve students' metacognitive awareness of how they learn.
• "frequent, ongoing assessment allows both for fine-tuning of instruction and student focus on progress."

Feedback is the central function of formative assessment. It typically involves a focus on the detailed content of what is being learnt, rather than simply a test score or other measurement of how far a student is falling short of the expected standard. Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, synthesising from the literature, list seven principles of good feedback practice:

1. It clarifies what good performance is (goals, criteria, expected standards);
2. It facilitates the development of self-assessment in learning;
3. It provides high quality information to students about their learning;
4. It encourages teacher and peer dialogue around learning;
5. It encourages positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem;
6. It provides opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance;
7. It provides information to teachers that can be used to help shape teaching.