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Study on the Effectiveness of Formative and Summative Assessment

Techniques in Education

Article · February 2019

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Anas Lahrichi
Al Akhawayn University
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 University of Sunderland
School of Education

EDP381 – Subject Studies 2018-19

Assignment: Commentary 2

Table of Contents
1. Introduction (161 words) ................................................................................................ 2
2. Literature Review (940 words) ....................................................................................... 2
a) Rationale behind Assessment...................................................................................... 2

b) Formative Assessment ................................................................................................ 3

c) Summative Assessment .............................................................................................. 4

2 Vignette (196 words) ..................................................................................................... 5

a) Formative Assessment Sample ................................................................................... 5

b) Summative Assessment Sample .................................................................................. 5

4. Evaluation ......................................................................................................................... 5
5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 8
6. References ..................................................................................................................... 9
7. Appendix ..................................................................................................................... 10
a) Formative Assessment Sample ................................................................................. 10

b) Formative Assessment Correction............................................................................. 11

c) Summative Assessment Sample ................................................................................ 12

d) Summative Assessment Correction ........................................................................... 16

Table of Figures

Figure 1 : Summative Assessment Diagram (Harlen, 2006) ............................................................................... 4

Figure 2: Grade in Trimester 1 Final Exam (Summative Assessment) ................................................................ 7
Figure 3:Variation in Grades of Trimester 1 Final Exam (Summative) ............................................................... 8
Figure 4: The ideal Student Learning and Development Experience (John,2013) ............................................... 8
Figure 5:The Actual Student Learning and Development Journey (John,2013)................................................... 9

1. Introduction (161 words)

It is an educator’s main role to ensure that pupils are learning and are becoming responsible
adults. No matter which teaching strategy is employed, it is crucial to have an effectiveness
measuring scale. The latter would be assessment. In the following work, we analyse the
different types of assessments and tackle questions such as: How to fairly design assessments?
What are the types of assessment and how to best distribute roles between teacher and student?
What is the difference between formative and summative assessment? How to embed
assessment in more classroom activities and give a dimension of learning to it? Which kind of
assessment is most impactful on student achievement and why? How could the teacher
effectively feed assessment results into lesson planning? In order to tackle the questions
mentioned above, we analyse the current body of literature on assessment and then provide an
example of both formative/summative assessments accompanied with an analysis in the light
of theory and best practice.

2. Literature Review (804 words)

a) Rationale behind Assessment

The use of assessment in educational settings dates back to the earliest school systems and
it has as a purpose to measure student achievement after the administration of a certain learning
episode. Indeed, Gadsby argues that assessment is a very important tool to make sure that pupils
have an effective learning experience. In addition to that, tweaking assessment to make it for
learning (Assessment for Learning) “allows pupils to take ownership of their own progress and
it creates independent learners” (Gadsby, 2012,p.12). Tamir suggested “to integrate assessment
with the curriculum and to assess in more authentic contexts” (Pinchas Tamir, 1998). Gardner
has defined assessment for learning as “the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for
use by learners and their teachers, to identify where the learners are in their learning, where
they need to go and how best to get there” (Gardner, 2012,p.3). In traditional settings,
assessment is mostly used in its summative form as being something external and planned at
the end of a learning experience. Often times, this high stakes view of assessment is linked
with anxiety of grades and fear of judgement. However, if we change the children’s perceptions
on marking: it could be seen as a growth promoting process (Gadsby, 2012). As Beverley has
phrased it : educationalists need to “shift from assessment to prove learning to assessment to
improve learning” (Beverley Bell, 2000,p.11). Teachers have to be careful about the
impact/image that assessment in their classroom portrays. In other words, Crooks argued that
assessment “guides judgement of what is important to learn, affects motivation and self-
perception, structures approaches to and timing of personal study, consolidates learning and
affects the development of learning strategies and skills” (Crooks, 1988).
A big aspect which is related to assessment is feedback as a personalized, improvement
boosting process that leads the pupil further down the learning path. According to the ten
principles of effective assessment mentioned by Harlen: effective strategies need to promote
motivation and personal growth in the learning process and timely,constructive feedback is key
to that (Harlen, 2006). Finally, the trend of multiple purposes for assessment has “highlighted
formative assessment” in an attempt by politicians to “hold educationalists accountable”. Some
of the purposes include : “auditing of schools,national monitoring,appraisal of
teachers,curriculum evaluation and the improvement of teaching and learning” (Beverley Bell,
2000).

b) Formative Assessment

According to Beverley, formative assessment involves the “teacher gathering, interpreting

and acting of information about the students’ learning, in order to improve the learning, during
the learning” (Beverley Bell, 2000). Scott adds to that : formative assessment promotes a
“dialogue with learners to clarify their existing ideas and to help them construct scientifically
accepted ideas” (Scott, 1999). On the other hand,“formative assessment has been defined as
the process of appraising,judging or evaluating students’ work or performance and using this
to shape and improve students’ competence (Gipps, 1994). Lambert argues that best practice
in education entails that assessment data is systematically used to set individual targets for
pupils. There are multiple formative assessment techniques such as: Think-Pair-Share, traffic
lights technique, oral questioning, choral response etc. (Lambert, 2012). Formative assessment
is tightly linked to teaching as it feeds into lesson plans and ensures optimized, impactful
lessons are delivered (Gadsby, 2012).

c) Summative Assessment

Summative assessment has as a purpose summarizing of learning but it also eventually

helps in achieving good learning strategies,therefore the distinction between formative and
summative assessment could be fuzzy at times (Gardner, 2012,p.87). Summative assessment
focuses on reporting achievements and should be based on criteria in order to show extent of
realization of each learning outcome (Gardner, 2012,p.89). Indeed, learning objectives ,that are
activated throughout different parts of the lesson, structure learning and help assessment
measure the impact of teaching (Gadsby, 2012). Summative assessments need to have “a
certain level of dependability” and it could be monitored through quality assurance procedures
for a sense of fairness and neutral representation of each pupil (Gardner, 2012,p.97). Figure 1
below represents a diagram for the steps of summative assessment:

Figure 1 : Summative Assessment Diagram (Harlen, 2006)

Note that according to Figure 1, summative assessments are evidence that need to be
interpreted in order to finally judge student achievement. Nonetheless, interpretations could be
tricky sometimes. John states that: assessment data needs to be interpreted carefully especially
if there will be actions/decisions later on. In fact, there are multiple methodologies to collect
data about student performance and each data stream has a different aspect to it and could be
potentially misleading in the hands of teachers/policy makers (John, 2013,p.100). The latter
point lead many researchers to question the “validity of summative assessments, in particular
external testing and examinations”. “There was also criticism of the impact of high stakes,
standardized testing on school learning” as it could lead to teaching to the test approaches
(Beverley Bell, 2000).
 3. Vignette (119 words)

a) Formative Assessment Sample

Please refer to Appendix (a) for an example of an activity that was formatively assessed
for our Year 6 science class. The learning objectives and outcomes of that lesson could be
found in appendix (e). We have provided in Appendix (b) the correction of this Groupwork as
the pupils were instructed to self-assess in order to diagnose any potential misconceptions
and then formatively address them.

b) Summative Assessment Sample

As an example of a summative assessment, we have provided in Appendix (c) the end of

trimester 1 Year 6 science final exam which covered four chapters. Its correction is in Appendix
(d) and an analysis of student achievement results is presented in the next section.

4. Evaluation (998 words)

a) Formative Assessment

We will discuss in this section our formative assessment sample provided in Appendix (a).
Starting with the title, we made sure to include the type of the activity: which is a group activity.
The purpose of teaming up students is to have mixed ability groupings which help the lower
ability cohorts achieve better and the gifted and talented to coach and understand better
concepts through explaining them. In fact, the title also includes the specific chapter/lesson for
which this worksheet applies as well as the lesson’s date. The purpose behind labelling which
lesson we are in is to help pupils organize their papers and keep track of the progression of
their learning throughout the unit. Right below the title is the overall directions prompt, we
refer students to which textbook page they could refer to answer these questions in addition to
the time planned for this activity. Our aim is to develop critical and independent learners and
that is why they are urged, in case they get stuck, to first check the book, think about it, consult
with their teammates and only then ask the teacher. In that sense, pupils get to practice
analysing texts and filtering/looking for relevant information and then debating within their
team which answer is correct. One of the advantages of groupwork is the opportunity to develop
social skills of working in teams as well as the enhanced learning that occurs through sharing
and talking about abstract concepts. Gardner affirms that it has been shown that “talk leads to
growth of cognitive development” (Gardner, 2012). Moving on in Appendix (a) to the activity
itself, its nature is not simply recalling and actually aims for higher cognitive skills of
comparing and contrasting different answers. We picked this format of questions because they
consolidate well the knowledge of various key vocabulary items in the lesson. After the groups
finish their worksheet, they are handed out the correction (Appendix (b)) which they use to
self-assess their progress. A great way to “bridge the gap between student outcomes and teacher
expectations” is to give pupils a chance to self-assess their work (Gadsby, 2012). The pupils
assign themselves a grade without the anxiety of the teacher doing it and can then consult their
mistakes and go back to the book and try to understand them. The latter strategy includes a
deep change in behavior and a re-assignment of teacher student roles that leads to more
individual accountability of learner (Gardner, 2012, p. 35). As a coach in this student-centered
process, we make sure to pace around the groups and ask essential questions to check for
understanding and urge pupils to explain the root of their mistakes and how they have corrected
themselves. Once the pupils recognize which questions they got wrong, it is valuable feedback
on their future areas of growth which is then used it as feed forward to reinforce their learning
through the use of this formative assessment technique. After engaging in these assessment for
learning activities, pupils are presented with a plenary which is also self-assessed and used both
by the student to know which learning outcome they still struggle with and by the teacher as
an estimate of overall impact of lesson so that it could be considered when planning for the
next learning segment. In other words, the plenary is a diagnostic assessment which aims to
identify pupil misconceptions after the lesson (Beverley Bell, 2000). A variation of this activity
consists of the same material layout but peer-assessed. We use occasionally use peer
assessment to stimulate discussions and enable learners as resources for each other. Peer-
assessment best happens when the pupils have a model of what constructive feedback looks
like. Finally, the grades obtained by the groups are not recorded in their gradebook because
formative assessment data doesn’t necessarily feed in smoothly to represent students’
achievements as they could prove tricky and context-based. An example of a factor that weighs
in is the efficiency of the teacher gathering reliable data that could be used to generate
judgments (Gardner, 2012). However, it is crucial for the students to have a clear idea of where
they are and where they need to go next through formative assessment.

b) Summative Assessment
 The summative assessment presented in Appendix (c) along with its correction in
Appendix(b) is a trimester final exam that includes four chapters. Although it is quite early to
start having subject finals by Year 6, we believe it is important for learners to realize that the
chapters are interconnected and that they need to develop good study habits to stay on top of
all materials. The weight of this assignment is 25% of the overall grade and they make use of
results from previous chapter summative assessments to know how to best prepare for their
final exam as well as class formative activities in which we review materials and pupils can get
feedback about which learning outcomes to focus on more. The aforementioned learning
outcomes serve as “common dimensions of learning” that help make the progress comparable
through analysis of summative results (Maxwell, 2004). Concerning the format of questions,
we make sure to diversify in order to appeal for all styles of learning (multiple choice, short
answers, critical thinking questions, graphic organizers, tables) and at the start of the next
trimester we provide the marked copies back along with the correction so that pupils could
learn from their mistakes. The practice of giving feedback on materials of a previous trimester
promotes lifelong learning and not only working for a specific test. We also analyse the results
of this summative assessment in order to optimize our teaching practices and provide better
support to all pupils. The results of this analysis are presented in Figure 2 and 3 which show
that the class average was 73. Our conclusion was that the given time slot wasn’t enough for
all pupils to double check their answers and we’ll make sure to reduce the number of problems
in the next final.

Grade in Trimester 1 Final Exam

90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Figure 2: Grade in Trimester 1 Final Exam (Summative Assessment)

 Figure 3:Variation in Grades of Trimester 1 Final Exam (Summative)

5. Conclusion (153 words)

To conclude, “teaching doesn’t lead necessarily to learning” and assessment is a fair

quantitative indicator for impact of teaching on learning (Gadsby, 2012). Furthermore,
assessment has a great potential on learning especially its formative form because it supports
the development of learning how to learn (James, 2007). However, it is to be noted that
learning is a dynamic process and each individual has unique experiences. John explains
through Figure 4 and 5 the difference between ideal student learning steps versus the actual
paths described by modern neuroscience (John, 2013).

Figure 4: The ideal Student Learning and Development Experience (John,2013)

There are many factors in the learning and cognitive development of pupils that we
inherently ignore due to their inner nature. This leads to a non-linear path in learning which
takes different times and directions for various learner profiles. It is therefore not always
accurate to judge students and/or teachers solely on grades.
 Figure 5:The Actual Student Learning and Development Journey (John,2013)

6. References

Beverley Bell, B. C., 2000. Formative Assessment and Science Education. s.l.:Kluwer
Academic Publishers.
Crooks, 1988. The impact of Classroom Evaluation Practices on Students. Review of
Educational Research, 58(14), pp. 438-481.
Gadsby, C., 2012. Perfect Assessment for Learning. Reprint Edition ed. s.l.:Independent
Thinking Press.
Gardner, J., 2012. Assessment and Learning. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: SAGE.
Gipps, 1994. Beyond testing : Towards a Theory of Educational Assessment. London: The
Falmer Press.
Harlen, 2006. Teaching,Learning and Assessing Science 5-12. 4th ed. London: Sage.
James, M. e. a., 2007. Improving Learning how to Learn : Classrooms,Schools and
Networkds. London: Routledge.
John, S., 2013. Selected contemporary assessment issues. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Lambert, K., 2012. 60 formative assessment techniques, s.l.: OCPS Curriculum Services.
Maxwell, 2004. Progressive assessment for learning and certification : some lessons from
school-based assessment in Queensland. Fiji, Third Conference of the association of
commonwealth examination and assessment boards.
Pinchas Tamir, R. S. R., 1998. Teaching science by inquiry: assessment and learning. Journal
of Biological Education, 33(1), pp. 27-32.
Scott, 1999. An analysis of science classroom talk in terms of the authoritative and dialogic
nature of the discourse. Boston, NARST annual meeting.

7. Appendix
a) Formative Assessment Sample
b) Formative Assessment Correction
c) Summative Assessment Sample

Al Akhawayn School of Ifrane

6th Grade Science
Trimester Final
Please write down all the steps to your answers
This test is over 100 points
Time allotted: 45 minutes
Problem 1 (28 pts,4 pts each)
Problem 2 (28 pts,4 pts each)
Problem 3 ( 25 pts,4 pts each and 5 points for last one)
Problem 4 ( 19 pts,3 pts each and 4 pts for first question)
d) Summative Assessment Correction
 e) Learning Objectives and Success Criteria of Lesson

WALT (What are we learning today):

 Start lesson 2 on cells and organization of life.
 Discover different parts of a cell.
 Know the difference between a prokaryotic and a eukaryotic cell.
WILF (What I’m looking for):
 Know that all life is made up of cells.
TIB (This is because):
 Understanding cells helps understand all life eventually.
Learning Outcomes:
 Students are able to define cells as basic elements of any organism.
  Students can explain that animal and plant cells are different.
 Students can pinpoint some organelles and their function.

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