Formative Assessment: Pros and Cons You Need to Know
A formative assessment occurs before or during a unit or lesson’s implementation to inform the student and instructor of progress. It allows for adjustments in learning to be made and to ensure learning outcomes are achieved.
Formative assessment allows you to measure and track students' progress in real time and change the course curriculum and instruction as necessary.
How is Formative Assessment Formalized as a Practice?
Formative assessment is a method of assessing students' understanding of course material. It is an ongoing assessment strategy that could include a multitude of activities, all with a purpose of creating understanding of the learner’s progress of the learning objectives. Formative assessment activities should be chosen based upon the course material, learner and teacher attributes, but could entail a series of quick-fire questions, one-minute reflection writing assignments, in-class discussions, or classroom polls. Any activity or task that assists the teacher and student in understanding the learner's progress throughout the course and provides teachers with next steps during instruction to circle back on a concept and/or identify specific students who need reteaching is formative assessment.
Students will face challenges in their studies—they may struggle to understand a subject or grasp a concept. It is nearly impossible for a teacher to notice the struggle of every student and provide the necessary support without using formative assessment.
Because formative assessments are considered part of the learning process, they do not require the same graded evaluation as summative assessments (such as end-of-unit exams). Instead, they provide pupils with the ability to show what they know at that point in the learning process towards mastery, similar to a homework project. They help teachers check for comprehension along the way and make decisions regarding future instruction; they can provide students with comments for improvement.
Why is Formative Assessment Vital?
Without formative assessment, there is a chance the lesson or unit will proceed with students lacking understanding of critical components of the learning outcomes. Valuable learning time will be lost and the unit may fail to achieve the intended outcomes.
For behavioral change and community-engaged programs, this sort of evaluation is crucial. A formative assessment helps the teacher deal with unexpected events and react to emergent features.
When you're unable to monitor and gather practical input, a formative assessment can be used to improve the unit’s execution and increase the odds of achieving the learning outcomes. With the assistance of formative assessments, the numerous process changes can be clearly understood.
Valid reasons for what works, what doesn't, and why can be discovered with formative assessments. As a result, the unit will be more likely to succeed as teachers gather more knowledge and improve potential project formulations.
Advantages of Formative Assessment
Below are some benefits and advantages to consider when planning formative assessments.
1. Aids in the development of skills
The primary goal of formative assessments is to assist learners in the development of competencies. The teachers can use this type of evaluation to determine an individual’s learning needs and guide them toward their learning objectives.
This method identifies an individual's obstacles and challenges in order to develop appropriate solutions to overcome them. The next lesson or task also gets scheduled during the evaluation.
2. Examining student work
Students' work attitude—how they handle solo work, group work, hands-on tasks, and other factors—can reveal a lot of information, particularly if pupils are expected to explain their reasoning during the procedure. When teachers spend time analyzing students' work, they learn about:
- Current comprehension, student attitudes, and skills developed concerning the subject topic
- Teaching styles, strengths, and shortcomings
- Any additional or specialized support required
Teachers might adapt their instruction to be more efficient in the future based on such a study of students' classroom work.
3. Questioning techniques
Questioning techniques can be used with individuals, small groups, or the entire class. Asking students to respond to well-thought-out, higher-order questions like "why" and "how" is an effective formative assessment strategy. Higher-order questions require students to think more profoundly and assist the teacher in determining the degree and scope of their comprehension.
Giving pupils a "wait time" to react is another tactical inquiry method used in formative evaluation. When comprehensive inquiries are paired with an appropriate wait time, studies have indicated that student engagement in classroom conversation is higher.
4. Documentation
The next significant advantage of formative assessment is that it provides documentation of the learning process. This documentation of challenges and the outcomes obtained in the early and middle stages of the process can become an integral component of collaboration between teachers.
5. Complex instructional strategies are developed and refined
Formative assessments are practical for various interventions, and they are particularly beneficial for improving broad-range and composite instructional strategies where multiple components are consistently implemented at the same time.
Disadvantages of Formative Assessment
When it comes to formative assessment, there are a few drawbacks to consider.
1. Time-consuming and resource-intensive
Whether it’s done monthly, weekly, or daily, formative assessment can be a time- and resource-expensive procedure because it requires frequent data collection, research, reporting, and refining of the implementation plan to ensure success.
2. Experts experienced with assessments
Conducting the formative assessment thoroughly requires professionally qualified teachers who are able to analyze the criteria for mastery and create appropriate measures to assess student progress. Formative Assessment training can support the process and guide how to develop quality assessments..
3. Creates complexity challenges
Formative assessment presents a variety of methodological issues because formative assessment requires on-going and timely analysis and refinement to evaluate the impact of the instruction. Furthermore, it only becomes possible to measure outcomes after a strategy is executed. Another drawback is the difficulty in determining the specific intervals at which to evaluate the success of a strategy.
4. Evaluators must maintain objectivity
The intervention is shaped by constant feedback, and the teacher’s objectivity should improve. There should be a consistent plan in place to keep the necessary distance for impartiality while providing thorough and formative input.
Formative Assessment Implementation
Any formative assessment implementation plan is more robust when developed and implemented collaboratively by an instructional team. Collaboration between teachers, especially those with standard courses and curriculum, provides an opportunity for significant professional development and improved instructional effectiveness. The implementation team's plan should consider the following questions:
- What should the students know and be able to demonstrate? (Learning outcomes)
Formative assessment should be firmly rooted in the learning outcomes intended by the curriculum. Once the learning outcome (target) is identified the success criteria is created to document what the student will be able to do to demonstrate mastery of the outcome. A pre-assessment is often helpful in understanding what each student has comprehended before the unit's onset.
- How will I know they are making progress and on-target to achieve the learning outcomes? (Demonstration of competencies)
Determining the formative assessment activities that will provide accurate and precise information about student understanding is a critical component of the assessment plan. The assessments should be tightly aligned to the intended learning outcomes and meet the success criteria established for mastery..
- To make adjustments in the instruction, what stages of education are most critical to understanding learning progress? (Key checkpoints)
Create a map for the unit or lesson's progression and establish essential understandings that each student should achieve along the way. Consider points in the learning where a misunderstanding is likely, based on the teacher's experience teaching other students. Also, consider where a student's misunderstanding could create a significant learning obstacle in the learning progression.
- What are some common misunderstandings teachers should expect, and how would they address them if they occur? (Strategy tool bag)
Responding to a classroom full of students learning at different rates is complex. In the formative assessment planning process, preparing instructional strategies for common misunderstanding can improve instructional agility and decrease the teacher's pressure to promptly make significant and difficult decisions.
- When will our collaborative team convene to reflect upon the process, share strategies, and analyze student work?
Formative assessment is as complicated as it is essential. Establishing a timeframe and setting the expectation for the continued support of the instructional team is critical to successful instruction and student learning.
Conclusion
The impact of formative assessment on teaching and learning activities is significant. Providing formative feedback and evaluation is listed as one of the top influences on student achievement in John Hattie's work on Visible Learning. Students can direct the teacher's attention to areas where they need support, while teachers use the information from formative assessments to enhance their instructional techniques. The use of formative assessment is also an excellent technique to get more students participating in class because they're given different quick-fire activities as the course advances.
