Handbook of Formative Assessment

Heidi Andrade, Gregory J. Cizek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135283933
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Formative assessment has recently become a focus of renewed research as state and federal policy-makers realize that summative assessments have reached a point of diminishing returns as a tool for increasing student achievement. Consequently, supporters of large-scale testing programs are now beginning to consider the potential of formative assessments to improve student achievement. The mission of this handbook is to comprehensively profile this burgeoning field of study. Written by leading international scholars and practitioners, each chapter includes a discussion of key issues that dominate formative assessment policy and practice today, as well as those that are likely to affect research and practice in the coming years.

Key features include:

• Comprehensive – nineteen chapters cover all aspects of formative assessment including classroom assessment, large-scale applications, technological applications, applications for special needs students, K-12 and post-secondary applications, psychometric considerations, case studies, and discussion of alternative assessment formats such as portfolios and performance assessments.

• Integrative – thoughtful attention is given to the integration of large-scale and classroom assessments.

• Practical – provides practical guidance on how to conduct formative assessments that generate credible information to guide instruction.

• Global – provides perspectives from leading international scholars and practitioners whose expertise spans diverse settings, student populations, and educational systems.

• Accessible Style – although grounded in the latest research, the book's style and tone has been carefully crafted to make it accessible to both the textbook and professional markets. It will also be a critical reference book for researchers in teacher preparation, educational administration, and educational policy studies.

I Foundations of Formative Assessment

1 An Introduction to Formative Assessment

History, Characteristics, and Challenges

Gregory J. Cizek

DOI: 10.4324/9780203874851-2

Formative assessment offers great promise as the next best hope for stimulating gains in student achievement. In this chapter, the roots and nature of the concept are explored, and a definition and key characteristics of formative assessment are provided with contrasts to its high-profile cousin, summative assessment. Finally, several challenges that threaten successful implementation of formative assessment are noted, with challenges described separately for classroom and—if demonstrated to be feasible—large scale contexts.

Assessment in Education

In K-12 education contexts, large-scale achievement tests consistently attract the most attention in terms of policy maker initiatives, student and educator focus, and public awareness. Since at least the 1970s, when states such as Florida implemented consequential pupil competency tests, they have been a centerpiece of reform efforts, accountability systems, instructional emphasis, and in some instances, an understandable source of anxiety for those affected by the results. Such competency tests are designed to measure accumulated learning over an extended time (often, a school year).

These tests are categorized as summative assessments. In brief, any test or other system of information gathering is a summative assessment if it meets the following two criteria: (1) it is administered at the end of some unit of instruction (e.g., unit, semester, school year); and (2) its purpose is primarily to categorize the performance of a student or system. That is, its main purpose is obtain a measurement of achievement to be used in decision making; assigning grades; awarding or denying a diploma, license, or credential; making promotion/retention decisions; or classifying test takers according to defined performance categories such as the now-familiar Basic, Proficient, and Advanced. Because this primary purpose requires high quality information about overall test performance, summative assessments are typically designed to yield highly reliable and valid total scores. A less flattering way of characterizing this characteristic is to note that summative assessments are usually course-grained. As such, they are typically not intended—and are thus less well-suited—to provide individual diagnostic information about students, to yield effective remediation recommendations, to identify specific areas for individualizing instruction, and so on.

Because of their relative maturity and (often) important stakes attached to performance on them, summative assessments are the most visible, consequential, and (sometimes) controversial tests encountered in education today. It is understandable why this is so. For one, the sizeable allocation of financial resources in support of summative, every-pupil accountability tests administered across the United States in compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) warrants greater attention to ensure that the investment is well-placed. Second, as indicated previously, the stakes for students, educators, and levels of educational organization (e.g., schools, districts, etc.) are often very high. Finally, because of their level of visibility and familiarity even to those outside of educational contexts, discussions about the role and results of summative assessments can be joined by a broad spectrum of the interested public.

In contrast to summative assessment stands what has been called formative assessment. In subsequent sections of this chapter—indeed in all of the chapters in this volume—the concept will be explored in considerable depth and detail, but a brief introduction will be provided here. A test or other system of information gathering would be considered a formative assessment if it meets two criteria. First, a formative assessment is administered midstream, in the course of some unit of instruction. In addition, the primary purpose of formative assessment is one or more of the following: to identify the student’s strengths and weaknesses; to assist educators in the planning of subsequent instruction; to aid students in guiding their own learning, revising their work, and gaining self-evaluation skills; and to foster increased autonomy and responsibility for learning on the part of the student.

Whereas summative testing has dominated the assessment landscape in terms of large-scale educational policy and prominence, formative assessment is beginning to attract increased interest. There are a number of reasons why this is the case. For one, summative large scale assessments initially accomplished an explicit intended objective of their implementation; namely, focusing attention on and raising educational achievement. There is compelling evidence that summative testing has had beneficial effects (Phelps, 2005a) on student achievement. However, although it is also true that the public continues to strongly support such testing (Phelps, 2005b) there is increasing opposition to additional mandated summative testing (Wang, Beckett, & Brown, 2006), and U.S. education is likely witnessing a point of diminishing returns for this strategy (Cizek, 2001).

Enter formative assessment. In juxtaposition to concerns about additional summative assessment, there appears to be an enthusiasm for a closer look at and increased use of formative assessment. There are sound reasons for the enthusiasm. Among educators, researchers, and policy makers, there appears to be a heightened awareness that formative assessment—the long neglected bridesmaid in the testing party—has the potential to provide missing linkages between classroom practice and large-scale assessments and, perhaps most importantly, represent the next best hope for promoting greater achievement gains for students.

A growing body of research on formative assessment exists. A number of applications of formative assessment have been documented, and a few planned assessment systems (Cizek, 1995; Cizek & Rachor, 1994) are being designed or implemented to investigate the extent to which formative assessment can be integrated into, alongside, or in conjunction with extant summative programs. In short, formative assessment is promising; a look at formative assessment is timely; and investment into formative assessment has the potential to yield substantial dividends. These characteristics have motivated the production of this Handbook of Formative Assessment and they suffuse the chapters in this volume. In the remaining portions of this introduction, we will first take a closer look at the roots of formative assessment, evolution of the concept, and the current conceptualizations.

Roots and History of Formative Assessment

The roots of formative assessment can be traced to a monograph of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in which Scriven (1967) first coined the term formative evaluation. The publication in which Scriven’s use of the term appeared was a volume of the AERA’s Monograph Series on Curriculum Evaluation. The term was clearly grounded in the practice of program evaluation, and the context in which Scriven introduced the concept was one in which the effectiveness of school programs and curricula was the object of inquiry. In Scriven’s and other early works, the broader conceptualization of assessment had not yet been developed to the extent it is today, and the focus of information-gathering related to student achievement was squarely on the evaluative aspect of that activity.

The concept of formative evaluation attained broader recognition when it was popularized in association with the influential volume by Benjamin Bloom and his associates entitled the Handbook of Formative and Summative Evaluation of Student Learning (Bloom, Hastings, & Madaus, 1971). Although that volume is perhaps most well-known for its elaboration of taxonomies of educational objectives introduced previously by Bloom (1956), its explication of the distinction between two concepts—formative and summative evaluation—is considered foundational. Bloom et al. first described what they meant by summative evaluation:

We have chosen the term “summative evaluation” to indicate the type of evaluation used at the end of a term, course, or program for purposes of grading, certification, evaluation of progress, or research on the effectiveness of a curriculum, course of study, or educational plan…. Perhaps the essential characteristic of summative evaluation is that a judgment is made about the student, teacher, or curriculum with regard to the effectiveness of learning or instruction after [emphasis added] the learning or instruction has taken place. It is this act of judgment which produces so much anxiety and defensiveness in students, teachers, and curriculum makers. We do not believe it is possible to escape from the use of summative evaluation, nor would we wish to do so. (1971, p. 117)

It is clear from their definition that Bloom and his colleagues (1971) were extending the term summative evaluation beyond the usage that Scriven (1967) had in mind. As the preceding definition implies, summative evaluation was not confined to a program evaluation context, but was also seen as relevant to the assessment of learning and to individual students. Bloom et al. then contrasted summative evaluations—arguably the most prominent assessments at that time—with evaluations that served a different purpose. According to Bloom et al.:

Formative evaluation is for us the use of systematic evaluation in the process of [emphasis added] curriculum construction, teaching and learning for the purpose of improving any of these three processes.… This means that in formative evaluation one must strive to develop the kinds of evidence that will be most useful in the process, seek the most useful method of reporting the evidence, and search for ways of reducing the negative effect associated with evaluation—perhaps by reducing the judgmental aspects of evaluation or, at least, by having the users of the formative evaluation (teachers, students, curriculum makers) make the judgments. (1971, p. 118)

Here, too, we can see in the use of the term formative evaluation that a connection to the area of program evaluation was still apparent. However, although the seminal ideas of Bloom and his colleagues (1971) are recognized for their influence on the practice of program evaluation, the implications of those ideas have surely had a profound impact on the field of assessment as well. For example, Bloom’s expanded definition clearly foreshadowed the linkages and uses of the formative approach he outlined for the assessment of individual students and toward the aim of improving teaching and learning.

Finally, Bloom’s work suggested important distinctions between evaluation and assessment that are now widely accepted. In brief, in the context of education, evaluation refers to the act of ascribing worth or merit to the results of an information-gathering procedure (such as assigning grades on a test). Assessment is much broader; it refers to a planned process for gathering and synthesizing information relevant to the purposes of discovering and documenting students’ strengths and weaknesses, planning and enhancing instruction that is appropriate given the student’s learning needs, or making recommendations related to educational goals for a student (Cizek, 1997).

Current Conceptions of Formative Assessment

Since the introduction of the concept, formative assessment has evolved in its meaning and it has spawned substantial interest and research. From one perspective, formative assessment can be defined in terms of what it is not: Typically, formative assessment has been characterized—as foreshadowed by Bloom in the preceding paragraph—by the absence of an evaluation aspect; that is, by avoiding the assignment of penalties, grades, or other accountability-related consequences for the person(s) participating in the assessments.

But formative assessment is much more than this. Broadly conceived, formative assessment refers to the collaborative processes engaged in by educators and students for the purpose of understanding the students’ learning and conceptual organization, identification of strengths, diagnosis of weaknesses, areas for improvement, and as a source of information that teachers can use in instructional planning and students can use in deepening their understandings and improving their achievement. The possible formats of formative assessments are correspondingly broad. Formative assessment informat...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Part I Foundations of Formative Assessment
• Part II Formative Assessment Methods and Practice
• Part III Challenges and Future Directions for Formative Assessment
• Contributors
• Author Index
• Subject Index