By Jaya Carrier
I hope everyone’s having a great week! Lots of people across the WA community are thinking about assessment practice. In light of this, I was interested to read a new study that looks at embedding formative assessment and its impact on student outcomes. Objectives: To understand how formative assessment and training in formative assessment practices improve student learning and outcomes Summary:
- Formative assessment is defined here as activities that enable teachers to assess what students know and then shape their teaching thereafter to meet student needs and improve their outcomes
- Traditionally, improving these practices at scale has been challenging and therefore research literature has hitherto been limited to small-scale studies
- This research showed that a focus on embedding formative assessment in 70 schools across the UK made a positive difference to student outcomes - equivalent to two months of pupil learning
- It also showed that the size of the effect was higher on lower prior attaining students
Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:
- How am I currently using assessment - formative and summative - to inform my teaching practice?
- What would I like to improve in my assessment practice?
Thanks Jaya. Formative assessment is more important than summative because it supports learning, rather than measures it (when it could be too late). I think our discussions of assessment in the coming months will help ensure we have the best balance between formative assessment (not graded) and summative assessments (with grades). Here's a useful list of 56 examples of formative assessment: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nzhdnyMQmio5lNT75ITB45rHyLISHEEHZlHTWJRqLmQ/pub?slide=id.gb1e798ac_12012
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