Abstract
“Formative assessment” has been the subject of conceptual pluralism for many years. In the beginning there was “assessment”, which was originally a benign and non-judgmental activity, but this has been captured over time by inferences of judgment, measurement and finality. During recent decades, when the question of purpose was posed, we have struggled to qualify the original word in ways that might indicate different purposes. The element of final judgment was denoted by the adjective “summative”. The idea of assessment informing the future rather than merely summarising the past produced another adjective “formative” but in the minds and practices of many educators the distinction has remained unclear.
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Notes
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In the United Kingdom, the impact of their findings on policy is interestingly different within different parts of the UK. Wales and Scotland have each put a greater emphasis on formative assessment and downplayed the focus on testing, In England, on the other hand, at the time of writing, the testing regime remains in place, despite serious concerns about its cost-effectiveness. Recently the English government has announced the abolishing of one of its prominent exams, SATs, taken by children of the age of 14 and has replaced it with school report cards. This move, some argue, signals the beginning of the emphasis reverting to teacher assessment.
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Sutton, R. (2010). Making Formative Assessment the Way the School Does Business: The Impact and Implications of Formative Assessment for Teachers, Students and School Leaders. In: Hargreaves, A., Lieberman, A., Fullan, M., Hopkins, D. (eds) Second International Handbook of Educational Change. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 23. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2660-6_49
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