FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN THE TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS
Assessment is a critical step in the learning process. It determines whether or not the course's learning objectives have been met. A learning objective is what students should know or be able to do by the time a lesson is completed. Assessment affects many facets of education, including student grades, placement, and advancement as well as curriculum, instructional needs, and school funding.
Assessment is a key component of learning because it helps students learn. When students are able to see how they are doing in a class, they are able to determine whether or not they understand course material. Assessment can also help motivate students. If students know they are doing poorly, they may begin to work harder.
Just as assessment helps students, assessment helps teachers. Frequent assessment allows teachers to see if their teaching has been effective. Assessment also allows teachers to ensure students learn what they need to know in order to meet the course's learning objectives.
Formative assessment, including diagnostic testing, is a range of formal and informal assessment procedures conducted by teachers during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment. It typically involves qualitative feedback (rather than scores) for both student and teacher that focuses on the details of content and performance. It is commonly contrasted with summative assessment, which seeks to monitor educational outcomes, often for purposes of external accountability.
According to Harlen and James (1997), formative assessment is essentially positive in intent, in that it is directed towards promoting learning; it is therefore part of teaching; it takes into account the progress of each individual, the effort put in and other aspects of learning which may be unspecified in the curriculum; in other words, it is not purely criterionreferenced; it has to take into account several instances in which certain skills and ideas are used and there will be inconsistencies as well as patterns in behavior; such inconsistencies would be 'error' in summative evaluation, but in formative evaluation they provide diagnostic information; validity and usefulness are paramount in formative assessment and should take precedence over concerns for reliability;
even more than assessment for other purposes, formative assessment requires that pupils have a central part in it; pupils have to be active in their own learning (teachers cannot learn for them) and unless they come to understand their strengths and weaknesses, and how they might deal with them, they will not make progress.
Pupils not meeting expectations every grading period can be reduced if not eliminated if formative assessment is being considered and fully interpreted. Remediation in every competency should be given to pupils not mastering it, in such a way that when summative assessment is being given, pupils can make it and failing grades be avoided.
--oOo— The author is Teacher II at Del Rosario Elementary School