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Formative Assessments: For teachers or for students?

(No name for Peer Assessment)

Department of Education, University of the People

EDUC 5440: Assessment and Evaluation

Dr. Joseph Isaac

September 10, 2022

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Formative Assessments: For teachers or for students?

Formative assessments both involve action and reflection from the student and the

teacher. The former learns to explore and comprehend knowledge and experience into the

understandings they will need to meet a course goal and, where applicable, successfully perform

the summative assessment designed to prove it. The latter, however, also learns from observing

the pupil. Is this type of assessment, however, more formative for the less experienced learner?

The International Baccalaureate Organization (2018) views formative assessments as

“ongoing [and] aimed at providing information to guide teaching and improve student

performance” (p. 258), while educators Judy Halbert and Linda Kaser (n.d.), think “we should be

coaching as teachers more than just judging all the time”. This suggests the teacher as the learner

who goes through a more formative experience out of the educational instance. Matthew Lynch

(2016) similarly states that “summative assessment differs from formative assessment because

educators do not adjust their teaching methods for that particular group of students based on the

results. But teachers may use summative assessment to remediate students who failed to garner a

satisfactory score”. From the perspective of this contrast, formative assessment offers an exercise

on behalf of the teacher to better comprehend the learning process of a student, which goes

beyond having the latter face the same learning outcomes. Students may not perceive the

difference between one type of assessment and the other as much as a teacher would.

In terms of formative assessments being formative for students, Amanda Ronan (2015)

provides examples of strategies which highlight that. Firstly, she mentions Socrative, an app

where “students and teachers collaborate in real-time. Teachers pose questions while students

answer instantly on their own device. Teachers can then track student progress and run class

reports” (p. 5). She similarly points to graphic organizers, as “when students complete mind
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maps or graphic organizers that show relationships between concepts, they’re engaging in higher

level thinking”, and self-assessments, where “one way to check for student understanding is to

simply ask students to rate their learning” (p. 5). Finally, she addresses think-pair-share, where

the teacher is to “ask a question, give students time to think about it, pair students with a partner,

have students share their ideas. (…) Students learn from each other when discussing” (p. 5).

The above examples show that, while teachers are involved in the activities, as it is to

them that pupils present their works to, the focus is on the latter’s experience of the process and

how it helps them to internalize what they are learning. An evident example in the Film subject is

with projects. Students receive a grade for result (the final delivered movie) and process

(creating it in an orderly manner, as supported by the planning and reflective deliverables and the

accounts of how individual and team dynamics were). While they concentrate their efforts

towards an end product and get feedback and evaluation for it, what happens on the making is

something teachers don’t necessarily get to experience firsthand. This includes how pupils solve

challenges that arise during production, when mentors are not around and their insight is not

necessarily required. What is more, they end up doing a double assimilation task in bringing

recollections to the instructor, whether it is a single or group verbal recount, journal writing,

filling out log forms or assembling a portfolio. This gives them a deeper domain and agency of

their learning than a teacher can get, the latter’s guidance speaking too from personal experience.

In the end, while inexorably valuable and important to both parties, formative assessment

is still more formative for students than it is for teachers. How it informs instructional practice

ultimately benefits the process of people who are not in the same level of expertise as their

mentors, whether in subject matter or awareness of how one learns. Teachers certainly continue

to develop in these activities as lifelong learners, but they have had a main formation by then.
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References

Halbert, J., & Kaser, L. (n.d.). Lecture 1: Weaving the Ways: Wise, Strong and New. [Video].

Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/learn/teaching-plan/lecture/kkApA

International Baccalaureate Organization. (2018). Assessment principles and practices—Quality

assessments in a digital age. International Baccalaureate.

https://www.ibo.org/contentassets/1cdf850e366447e99b5a862aab622883/assessment-

principles-and-practices-2018-en.pdf

Lynch, M. (2016, August 23). Summative assessments, do you know these basics? The Edvocate.

https://www.theedadvocate.org/summative-assessments-know-basics/

Ronan, A. (2015, April 29). Every teacher’s guide to assessment. Edudemic.

https://www.moedu-sail.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/CFA-Handouts-for-C-

Assessment-Design.pdf