What is Formative Assessment?

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Formative Assessment refers to a method of assessing the professional developments by addressing the in-class activities and the student’s comprehensiveness of the on-going class activities. It mutually develops the activities of both the students and teachers adequately by harnessing insightful findings about classroom behaviours. This type of assessment is carried out either when the classes have progressed mid-way or before it progresses. With the results, the teachers would know if they must focus more on certain aspects when teaching and replan courses to be more beneficial and expedite the journey towards the academic goals of the educational institution. Formative Assessment is a tool that does not only stop by providing insightful information for the teachers and administrators; it also helps students to identify their strengths, limitations, and gaps to be bridged. Another significant quality of Formative Assessment is that it is not a score-based evaluation method. Instead, it would ask the students to recreate what they believe that their progress is like; for example, the students will be asked to draw a concept map to redefine what they learnt in class or be asked to write a few lines about why they are learning a particular topic.

History of Formative Assessment

In 1967, Michael Scriven, a specialist in the theory and practice of learning evaluation, coined the term ‘Formative Evaluation’ along with ‘Summative Evaluation’ (the contrary of Formative Assessment), where the definitions are explained by him soundly. According to Michael Scriven, Formative Assessment can be equipped as an instrument to measure the effectiveness of academic activity and to guide education institutions through best curriculums and how to adopt them. In 1968, Benjamin Bloom referred to this term in his book, namely ‘Learning for Mastery’. Bloom believed that Formative Assessment is a method of optimising the learning and teaching deliveries. Later in 1971, his subsequent book: ‘Handbook of Formative and Summative Evaluations’ was published. This is when Formative Assessment is perceived to be integrative with other aspects of the instructional units.

In what instances can you use Formative Assessment in your education centre?

Formative Assessment can be useful at any point of conducting a class; it can be done as a pre-assessment or in the mid-way of the lectures to understand the perspective of students to reform pedagogies when needed. Given below are some instances that you can use Formative Assessment in your classes.

    • Teachers can conduct formative activities to guide students through what they will be learning and what challenges they will be facing in the process in the form of a pre-assessment. Teachers can understand how the students perceive the lesson and reform their pedagogies to address the insecurities of the students strictly.
    • Formative Assessment can be conducted in the classes to understand what the students already know. This way, the students would not drift away from the lessons because they will always be learning something new, and their opinion was taken into account to form the lesson plan making them more enthusiastic to learn.
    • Formative Assessment depends on the participation of the students, and the teachers must focus on reinforcing student’s active participation by rewarding them. When the students are providing their feedback ultimately, the teacher can reward them for assisting in gathering insightful information about the point of view of the class from the end of the student.
    • Formative Assessment is a multi-purpose approach to assess the students’: focus, rate of comprehensiveness of in-class activities and active participation. Teachers can also monitor the current outcomes of the students’ work, and their ideas can be written down or verbally interrogated to reform future teaching practises or change the lesson plans, immediately if required.
    • Formative Assessment does not limit feedback to students, and teachers can use collaborative coaching techniques to cooperate with each other to learn from each other’s experiences and mistakes—this way the teachers can find each other’s limitations and overcome them professionally.

Why is it essential to implement a Formative Assessment in your education centre?

Formative Assessment gives a comprehensive definition of the actual interactions of the students and the teachers while addressing the current progressions of the classes. Also, this assessment method is a fit-to-all evaluation method; any class or any learning areas can be assessed using this method to understand the success rate of a teaching session with regard to the teacher’s predetermined class objectives. After the advent of student-oriented classes and flipped classes, the need for using Formative Assessment is stressed to be crucial in many educational institutions; as it must be to you.

A school’s Formative Assessment approach is used to build evidence-based teaching strategies that meet all the required teaching goals through two-way communication between student and teachers or between a teacher and another teacher. It provides qualitative data and quantitative data for the teachers to be fully-versed about their teaching practices and allows them to apprehend any advancements if suggested by the student’s or their peers’ feedback. Teachers can use different techniques to get evaluations from students, such as:

    • The teacher provides stickers for students to align the colours of stickers with their rate of understanding a specific topic.
    • Random Selection tools to give a chance to all the students to engage in the class and share their perspectives
    • Teachers initiate other techniques such as hot-seat questions, question shells and all-student responses. The teachers can use lists, charts, visual representations, summaries and reflections to encourage student feedback and collaborative assessments.

Therefore, your school can use Formative Assessment to measure the quality of your education deliveries and match the sustenance of your academy’s growth as an education service centre. You can use this method to clarify the learning intentions in the class so that all the students are on the right track, to evidently analyse the students’ awareness, to experiment and research on developing the teaching practices and enable learners to collaborate and learn with their peers.

As the governing body of the education centre, you will ultimately be granted with the insightful revelations of:

    • The rate of familiarity of teachers with the curriculums
    • The interest and enthusiasm of the teachers to optimise the learning environments for his/ her students
    • How creative and innovative the teacher is in teaching students and trying to get to know them better
    • How compatible and goal-driven the teacher is and his/her conduct affects the school’s brand awareness.

Click here to watch a video of a school that experimented on using Formative Assessment methods in their teaching practices.

Conclusion

The core understanding that any education centre must have is by acknowledging the power of professional growth through the eyes of the observers is vital. Challenging conversations, interacting feedback and deeply embedded practices of Formative Assessments encourage the teachers to be confident and determined in providing their best services for your organisation. School cultures which are fully versed about the best options when choosing instructional adjustments, learning tactics and assessing the classroom climate shifts are always prone to succeed in maintaining teaching with higher standards. Therefore, if your education institution is struggling to grasp the perspective of the students on your service, or in discovering ways to optimise the services of your educators, Formative Assessment technique is not-to-be-missed.
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