Formative assessment

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Formative assessment , including diagnostic testing , is a variety of formal and informal assessment procedures conducted by teachers during the learning process to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student achievement. This usually involves qualitative feedback (not scores) for students and teachers focused on content and performance details. This generally contrasts with summative assessment, which seeks to monitor educational outcomes, often for external accountability purposes.

Video Formative assessment

Definisi

Practicing in the classroom is formative to the extent that evidence of student achievement is generated, interpreted, and used by teachers, learners or their peers to make decisions about subsequent steps in instruction that tend to be better, or better established, than the decisions they would take if there was no evidence to be obtained.

Maps Formative assessment

The origin of the term

Michael Scriven coined the term formative and summative evaluation in 1967, and emphasized their differences both in terms of the purpose of the information they sought and how it was used. For Scriven, formative evaluations collect information to assess the effectiveness of the curriculum and guide the selection of the school system on which curriculum to adopt and how to improve it. Benjamin Bloom took the term in 1968 in the book Learning for Mastery to consider formative assessment as a tool for improving the teaching-learning process for students. The next book 1971 Handbook of Formative and Summative Evaluation , written with Thomas Hasting and George Madaus, shows how formative assessment can be attributed to learning units in different content areas. This is an approach that reflects the generally accepted meaning of the current term. For Scriven and Bloom, judgments, whatever other uses, are only formative when used to change subsequent educational decisions. Furthermore, however, Black and Wiliam have suggested this definition is too restrictive, since formative assessments can be used to provide evidence that the intended action is appropriate. They propose that:

Practicing in the classroom is formative to the extent that evidence of student achievement is generated, interpreted, and used by teachers, learners or their peers to make decisions about subsequent steps in instruction that tend to be better, or better established, rather than the decisions they would take if there was no evidence to be obtained.

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Versus summative appraisal

Type of assessment that people may be more familiar with summative assessment. The table below shows some basic differences between the two types of assessment.

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Rationale and practice

Formative assessment serves several purposes:

• to provide feedback for teachers to modify their next learning activities and experiences;
• to identify and remediate group or individual deficiencies;
• to shift the focus from achieving value and learning processes, to improving self-efficacy and mitigating the negative impact of extrinsic motivation;
• to increase students' metacognitive awareness of how they learn.
• "often, continuous assessment allows both for instruction setting and student focus on progress."

Characteristics of formative assessment:

According to Harlen and James (1997), formative assessment:

• is basically positive in intent, because it is directed to promote learning; therefore part of the teaching;
• it takes into account the progress of each individual, the effort put in and other aspects of learning that may not be specified in the curriculum; in other words, it is not purely a reference criterion;
• it should consider some examples where certain skills and ideas are used and there will be inconsistencies and patterns in behavior; Such inconsistencies will be a 'mistake' in summative evaluation, but in formative evaluation they provide diagnostic information;
• validity and usefulness are crucial in formative assessment and should take precedence over concerns for reliability;
• even more than the assessment for other purposes, formative assessment requires students to have a central part in it; students should be active in their own learning (teachers can not learn for them) and unless they understand their strengths and weaknesses, and how they might deal with them, they will not make progress.

Feedback is the main function of formative assessment. This usually involves focusing on the detailed content of what is being studied, not just the test scores or other measurements of how far a student fails to meet the expected standards. Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, synthesizing from the literature, listed seven principles of good feedback practice:

1. This describes good performance (objectives, criteria, standards expected);
2. This facilitates the development of self-assessment in learning;
3. This provides high quality information to students about their learning;
4. This encourages teacher and peer dialogue around learning;
5. This encourages confidence in positive motivation and self-esteem;
6. This provides an opportunity to close the gap between the current and desired performance;
7. This provides teachers with information that can be used to help shape teaching.

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Example

The time between formative assessment and adjustment for learning can be a matter of seconds or a matter of months. Some examples of formative assessment are:

• A language teacher asks students to choose the best thesis statement from selection; if all choose correctly he moves; if only some of which he can start a class discussion; if most answer wrong then he can review the work on the thesis statement.
• A teacher asks her students to write, in a brainstorming activity, everything they know about how a hot air balloon works so that she can find out what the student already knows about the field of science she wants to teach.
• The science watchdog looks at the results of previous year's student tests to help plan teacher workshops during the summer vacation, to address weaknesses in student performance.
• A teacher documenting student assignments and student conferences to help plan authentic activities to meet student needs
• Students may be assigned each of three "traffic cards" to indicate the level of conceptual understanding during the lesson. Green means that students understand the concepts and teachers can continue, yellow indicates that the instructor should slow down because the students only grasp the concept, and red indicates that the students hope that the teacher stops and explains the specific concept more clearly because they do not understand it.

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Evidence

Meta-analysis studies into formative assessment have shown significant learning improvements in which formative assessment is used, across all content areas, types of knowledge and skills, and level of education. Educational researcher Robert J. Marzano states:

Recall the discovery of Black and Wiliam (1998) the synthesis of more than 250 studies that formative assessment, as opposed to summative ones, produced a stronger effect on student learning. In his review of research, Terrance Crooks (1988) reports that the effect size for summative appraisal is consistently lower than the effect size for formative assessment. In short, this is a formative assessment that has a strong research base that supports its impact on learning.

While empirical evidence has shown an important impact of formative assessment in improving student achievement, it is also "recognized as one of the most powerful ways to improve student motivation". Believing in their ability to learn, contributing to the success of learning for individual endeavors and abilities, emphasizing progress toward learning goals rather than letter grades, and evaluating the "nature of their thinking for identifying strategies that improve understanding" are all manners in which motivation is enhanced through the use of effective formative assessment. However, for this benefit it becomes evident that formative assessment should (1) clarify and share learning objectives and success criteria; (2) Create effective class discussions and other tasks that show evidence of student understanding; (3) provide feedback that can and will be followed up; (4) allows students to become instructional resources with each other; and (5) stimulate students to become owners of their own learning.

Some researchers have concluded that standard-based assessment can be an effective way to "prescribe instructions and to ensure that no children are left behind".

The strongest evidence of improved learning outcomes comes from short cycles (more than a few seconds or minutes in a lesson) formative assessment, and medium to long-term assessments in which assessments are used to change the teacher's regular classroom practice.

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Strategy

Understand the purpose for learning

It is important for students to understand the goals and criteria of success when learning in the classroom. Often teachers will introduce learning goals to their students before the lesson, but will not do effective work in distinguishing between the final goals and what the students will do to achieve those goals. "When teachers start from what they want students to know and design their instructions backwards from that goal, then instructions are far more likely to be effective". In a study conducted by Gray and Tall, they found that 72 students between ages 7 and 13 had different experiences when learning in mathematics. This study shows that higher achieving students see mathematical ambiguity, whereas lower achieving students tend to get caught up in this misconception. This example can be seen in the numbers ${\ displaystyle 6 {\ frac {1} {2}}}$ . Although not explicitly stated, the operation between these two numbers is an addition. If we look at the ${\ displaystyle 6x}$ , here the operation is implied between ${\ displaystyle 6}$ and ${\ displaystyle x}$ is the multiplication. Lastly, if we look at the numbers ${\ displaystyle 61}$ , there are completely different operations between 6 and 1. Research shows that higher performing students can see this passing while other students do not.

Another study conducted by White and Frederiksen shows that when twelve seventh grade science classes are given time to reflect on what they perceive as quality work, and how they think they will be evaluated at their jobs, the gap between high achieving students and low achievers decreases.

One way to help with this is to offer students a variety of other student work examples so they can evaluate different pieces. By examining the different levels of work, students can begin to distinguish between superior and inferior work.

Feedback

There has been extensive research conducted to study how students are affected by feedback. Kluger and DeNisi (1996) reviewed over three thousand reports on feedback in schools, universities, and the workplace. Of these, only 131 of them were found to be scientifically rigorous and of those, 50 of the studies indicated that the feedback actually had a negative effect on the recipients. This is due to the fact that feedback often "involves the ego", ie the feedback focuses on the individual student rather than the quality of the student's work. Feedback is often given in the form of some numbers or letters and which perpetuates students compared to their peers. The aforementioned research shows that the most effective feedback for students is when they are not only told which areas they need to improve, but also how to improve them.

It has been proven that leaving comments beside the same value is ineffective by simply providing numerical values ​​/letters (Butler 1987, 1989). This is due to the fact that students tend to see their value and ignore any comments given to them. The next thing students tend to do is ask other students in the classroom for their grades, and they compare the value with their own value.

Ask a question

Questioning is an important part of the learning process and the more important part is asking the right kind of questions. Questions that promote student discussion and reflection make it easier for students to go on the right path to end their learning goals. Here are some great questions to ask students:

• What do you think of [student's] answers?
• What can we add to the [students] explanation?
• [Students] say this and [students] say it, but how can we combine this explanation into a complete answer?

Waiting time

The waiting time is the amount of time given to the student to answer the question asked and the time allowed for the student to answer. Mary Budd Rowe went on to see the results of a longer waiting time for the students. These include:

• Longer answer;
• failure to respond decreases;
• responses from students are more confident;
• students challenge and/or improve the answers of other students;
• more alternative explanations are offered.

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Peer-assessment

Having students assess each work has been learned to have many benefits:

• When students know that they will be judged by their peers, they tend to pay more attention to detail in their work.
• Students can talk to each other in a more comfortable language than the instructor. A student's insight may be more comparable to a teacher.
• Students tend to receive constructive criticism more than their fellow students rather than from instructors.
• When students are in the peer assessment process, a teacher can more easily take over the ongoing command of learning. Teachers can also stand on the sidelines and watch students continue to assess each other's work and can intervene whenever necessary.

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In K-12

Formative assessment is valuable for day-to-day teaching when used to adapt learning methods to meet student needs and to monitor student progress toward learning goals. Further, it helps students monitor their own progress as they get feedback from teachers and/or peers, allowing opportunities to revise and refine their thinking. Formative assessment is also known as an educational assessment, grade assessment, or assessment for learning.

Method

There are many ways to integrate formative assessment into K-12 classes. Although key concepts of formative assessment such as constant feedback, modifying instruction, and information about student progress do not vary among different disciplines or levels, methods or strategies may be different. For example, researchers develop generative activities (Stroup et al., 2004) and elisiting modeling activities (Lesh et al., 2000) that can be used as a formative assessment tool in math and science classes. Others develop a collaborative computer-supported learning strategy (Wang et al., 2004b). More information about the implications of formative assessment in a particular field is given below.

Destination

Formative assessment, or diagnostic testing as stated by the National Council of Professional Teaching Standards, serves to create an effective teaching curriculum and class-specific evaluation. By focusing on student-centered activities, a student can connect the material with its life and experience. Students are encouraged to think critically and develop analytical skills. This type of testing allows teacher lesson plans to become clear, creative, and reflective of the curriculum (T.P Scot et al., 2009).

Based on the Appalachian Education Laboratory (AEL), "diagnostic testing" emphasizes effective teaching practices while "considering the unique learner's experience and conceptions" (T.P Scot et al., 2009). In addition, it provides a framework for "efficient retrieval and application" (T.P Scot et al., 2009). by urging students to take over their education. The implication of this type of testing, is to develop a knowledgeable student with an in-depth understanding of the information and then be able to explain students' understanding of a subject.

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Specific apps

The following is an example of applying formative assessment to the content area:

In mathematics education

In mathematics education, it is important for teachers to see how their students approach the problem and how much mathematical knowledge is and at what level students use when solving problems. That is, knowing how students think in the learning or problem-solving process allows teachers to help their students overcome conceptual difficulties and, in turn, improve learning. In that sense, formative assessment is diagnostic. To use formative assessment in the classroom, a teacher must ensure that every student participates in the learning process by expressing their ideas; there is a trust environment in which students can give each other feedback; s/he (teacher) gives students feedback; and instructions are modified according to the student's needs. In mathematics classes, the thoughts that reveal activities such as eliciting model activities (MEA) and generative activities provide good opportunities for covering aspects of formative assessment.

Sample feedback

Here are some examples of possible feedback for students in math education:

• Student: "I do not understand." Teacher: "Okay, the first part is like the last problem you're doing and then we add one more variable.see if you can find out what it is, and I'll be back in a few minutes."
• "There are 5 wrong answers here, try to find them and fix them."
• "The answer to this question is... Can you find a way to solve it?"
• "You have used substitutions to solve all systems of this equation.Can you use current elimination to solve it?"

Various approaches to feedback encourage students to reflect:

• "You use two different methods to solve this problem.Can you explain the advantages and disadvantages of each method?"
• "Looks like you have a good understanding of... Can you solve more difficult problems?"

Another method is students looking for each other to gain knowledge.

• "You seem to confuse sinus and cosine, talk to Katie about the difference with both."
• "Compare your work with Ali and write some suggestions to other students who handle this topic for the first time."

In second/foreign language education

Because the ongoing assessment focuses on the process, it helps teachers to check on the status of their students' current language skills, that is, they can find out what students know and what students do not know. It also provides opportunities for students to participate in modifying or planning future classes (Bachman & Palmer, 1996). Participation in their learning fosters students' motivation to learn the target language. It also raises students' awareness of their target language, resulting in reorganization of their own goals. Therefore, it helps students to achieve their goals successfully and teachers become facilitators to cultivate target language skills.

In classrooms, short quizzes, reflective journals, or portfolios can be used as formative assessments (Cohen, 1994).

In basic education

In primary school, it is used to inform the next learning steps. Teachers and students use formative assessment as a tool for making decisions based on data. Formative assessment occurs when teachers provide information back to students in a way that enables students to learn better, or when students can engage in the same process, self-reflection. Evidence suggests that high-quality formative assessments have a strong impact on student learning. Black and Wiliam (1998) reported that the study of formative assessment showed an effect size on standardized tests of between 0.4 and 0.7, greater than the best known educational intervention. (Effect size is the ratio of the average increase in test scores in the innovation to the student group score range on the same test Black and Wiliam recognize that standardized tests are a very limited learning measure.) Formative assessment is very effective for students who have not succeeded in schools, thus narrowing the gap between low and high achieving students while improving overall achievement. Research examined by Black and Wiliam supports the conclusion that summative assessment tends to have a negative effect on student learning.

Activities that can be used as a scoring tool in math and science classes

Model elemination activities (MEA)

The model-eliciting activity is based on real-life situations where students, working in small groups, present mathematical models as solutions for client needs (Zawojewski & Carmona, 2001). Design issues allow students to evaluate their solutions according to the needs of clients identified in problem situations and defend themselves in productive and progressive productive cycles of conceptualization and problem solving. Model-eliciting activities (MEAs) have ideal ideational structures to help students build a sense of real-world problem-solving to the ever-increasing mathematical constructs. What is very useful for educators and researchers of mathematics is the capacity of the MEA to make students' thinking visible through their modeling and modeling cycles. Teachers do not encourage the use of certain mathematical concepts or their representational counterparts when presenting the problem. Instead, they choose activities that maximize the potential for students to develop concepts that are the focal point in the curriculum by building their initial and intuitive ideas. Mathematical models emerge from student interactions with problem situations and learning is assessed through this emerging behavior.

Generative activity

In generative activities, students are asked to produce mathematically similar results. Students can arrive at responses or build responses from these similarities in various ways. Equality provides coherence to the task and allows it to be "an organizational unit for performing certain functions." (Stroup et al., 2004)

Other activities can also be used as a formative assessment tool as long as they ensure the participation of each student, making students' minds visible to each other and to the teacher, promoting feedback to revise and refine thinking. In addition, as a complement to all this is to modify and adapt the instructions through information collected by these activities.

In computer supported learning

Many academics want to diversify assessment assignments, broaden the range of assessed skills and provide students with more timely and informative feedback on their progress. Others hope to meet student expectations for more flexible delivery and to produce efficiency in assessments that can ease the burden on academic staff. The step toward on-line and computer-based assessment is the natural result of the increasing use of information and communication technologies to improve learning. As more and more students look for flexibility in their programs, it seems inevitable that there will be a growing expectation for a flexible assessment as well. When implementing online and computer-based instruction, it is recommended that a structured framework or model be used to guide the assessment.

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In UK education

In the British education system, formative assessment (or assessment for learning) has become a key aspect of the personalized learning agenda. The Working Group on Reform 14-19, led by Sir Mike Tomlinson, recommends that learners' assessments be re-centered to be more teacher-led and less dependent on external assessments, placing learners at the heart of the assessment process.

The UK government has stated that personalized learning relies on teachers who know the strengths and weaknesses of each learner, and that the main way to achieve this is through formative assessment, which involves high-quality feedback for learners included in each teaching session.

The Reform Review Group has set out the following 10 principles for formative assessment.

Learning should:

• be part of effective lesson planning and learning
• focus on how students' learning attitudes
• is recognized as a classroom training center
• is considered the main professional skill for teachers
• sensitive and constructive because any judgment has an emotional impact
• consider the importance of student motivation
• promote commitment to learning objectives and shared understanding of criteria assessed
• allows students to receive constructive guidance on how to improve
• develop the learner's capacity for self-assessment so that they can be reflective and self-regulating
• recognize the achievements of all students

Benefits for teachers (Boston, 2002)

• The teacher can determine what standards the student already knows and how far.
• Teachers can decide what small changes or major changes in instructions they need to make so that all students can succeed in upcoming instruction and on subsequent assessments.
• Teachers can create lessons and activities suitable for individual groups of learners or students.
• Teachers can tell students about their current progress to help them set goals for improvement.

Benefits for students

• Students are more motivated to learn.
• Students are responsible for their own learning.
• Students can become shared users with teachers.
• Students learn valuable life skills such as self-evaluation, self-assessment, and goal setting.
• Students become more proficient in self-assessment

General formative ratings

A common formative assessment practice is a way for teachers to use judgments to adapt their teaching pedagogy in a favorable way. The concept is that teachers who teach public classes can provide their classes with a general assessment. The results of the assessment can provide valuable information to the teacher, the most important being who in the teacher team sees the most success with his students about a certain topic or standard. It is important to note that the purpose of this practice is to provide feedback for teachers, not students, so that tasks can be considered formative for teachers, but summarized for students. Researchers Kim Bailey and Chris Jakicic have stated that the general formative assessment "Improving efficiency for teachers, promoting equality for students, provides an effective strategy for determining whether a guaranteed curriculum is being taught and, more importantly, learning, informing each teacher's practices, building the capacity of teams to improve their programs, facilitate systematic, collective responses for troubled students, [and] offer the most powerful tools for changing adult behavior and practice. "

Developing a common formative assessment on the teacher team helps educators to address what Bailey and Jakicic lay out as important questions to answer when reflecting on student progress. These include:

• What do we want students to know and do?
• How do we know they are learning?
• What do we do when they do not learn?
• How do we respond when they have learned the information?

General formative assessment is a way to answer the second question. Teachers can collect data on how students do to gain insight and insight into what students are learning, and how they understand the lessons being taught. After collecting this data, teachers can proceed to develop systems and plans to answer the third and fourth questions and, for several years, change the first question to fit their students' specific learning needs.

When using general formative assessments to collect data on student progress, teachers can compare their students' results. Together, they can also share the strategies they use in the classroom to teach certain concepts. With these things, the teacher team can make some evaluation of what tasks and explanations seem to produce the best student outcomes. Teachers using alternative strategies now have new ideas for intervention and when they teach that topic in the coming years. Teachers' teams can also use general formative assessments to review and calibrate their assessment practices. Teachers from the general class should aim to be as consistent as possible in evaluating their students. Comparing formative assessments, or asking all teachers to evaluate them together, is a way for teachers to adjust their assessment criteria before a summative assessment. Through this practice, teachers are presented with the opportunity to grow professionally with people who know them and understand their school environment.

To make teacher team practices, general formative assessments, and most favorable strength standards, rear-setting practices should be utilized. Reverse design is the idea in education that summative assessment should be developed first and that all formative work and lessons leading to such a special assessment should be made second. Tomlinson and McTighe write, "While not a new idea, we've found that the use of a deliberate backward design to plan individual courses, units, and lessons produces clearer goals, more precise judgments, and more targeted instruction." More specifically, intervention and re-teaching time should be taken into account in the schedule. It is unrealistic to think that every student will get every perfect topic and be ready to take summative judgments on a specified schedule.

See also

• Assessment to learn
• [[Computer-aided

assessment]]

• E-assessment
• Educational assessment
• Problems set
• Assessment type

References

External links

• The Formative Appraisal Concept. ERIC Digest.
• Qualification and Curriculum Authority: appraisal
• Qualification and Curriculum Authority: assessment to learn documents
• Assessment for Learning (Learning and Skills Development Agency, now Network of Learning and Skills) (PDF)
• Learning and Skills Network Sites
• The Reform Rating Group website
• The EvaluationWiki - Mission EvaluationWiki is to provide a summary of the latest information and resources for everyone involved in science and evaluation practice. The EvaluationWiki is presented by the Nonprofit Evaluation Resources Institute.
• The OpenEd Directory of Formative Assessments
• Formative-Assessment.com - Comprehensive Site on Formative Assessment
• Phelps, Richard P. (2012). "The Influence of Tests on Student Achievement, 1910-2010". International Journal of Testing . 12 (1): 21-43. doi: 10.1080/15305058.2011.602920.

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