Evidence
Judgement of achievement
Goals
Figure 12.2Representation of summative assessment
Report on
achievement
result and therefore what is being assessed is uncertain. However there is a limit to the extent that both reliability and validity can be high. To raise the reliability it is necessary to reduce the error by increasing the control of what is assessed and how. This often means focusing on outcomes that can be more accurately assessed, such as factual knowledge, where there is a clear right answer. But if the purpose is to assess skills and understanding, where we need children to generate rather than select answers, this focussing would reduce the validity. There has to be a compromise and what this is depends on the purpose of the assessment.
For formative assessment validity is paramount; for summative assessment reliability has to be maintained at the highest level without compromising validity to too great an extent. The reason for reliability being less important for formative assessment than for summative assessment rests on the cyclic nature of the formative assessment process, as shown in Figure 12.3. The information is used to inform teaching in the situations in which it is gathered. Thus there is always quick feedback for the teacher and any misjudged intervention can be corrected.
C B A
Judgement of achievement Next steps
in learning
Goals
Children Activities
Figure 12.3The formative assessment cycle
Evidence
This is not to say that teachers do not need help with this important part of their work, but the help required is not to be found in examples of work judged to be at different levels. This is needed for summative teacher assessment, but formative assessment is concerned with the future, not with judgements about the past.
Summative assessment, on the other hand, has to provide information about where children have reached in their learning that parents and other teachers can depend upon, so attention has to be given to increasing reliability as far as possible without endangering validity.
The characteristics of formative and summative assessment
We now bring these general points about assessment to bear on the characteristics of assessment for the two purposes being discussed.
Formative assessment
Formative assessment helps the process of learning. This statement is supported by both theories of learning and research into practice, as we will see in Chapter 13.
Formative assessment has to take account of all the aspects of children’s behaviour that affect their learning – not only the progress being made in knowledge and skills, but also the effort put in and the other aspects of learning that are unspecified in the curriculum. It must be positive, indicating the next steps to take, not pointing out what is missing. This means that formative assessment is not a pure criterion-referenced assessment. It is more ipsative or child-referenced. The teacher will have in mind the progression that he or she intends for the child, and this will be the basis of the action taken. The teacher will be looking across several instances in which a particular skill or idea is being used and will see variations and possibly patterns in behaviour. It is these variations (which would be seen as sources of ‘error’ if the purpose of the assessment were summative) that, in the formative context, provide diagnostic information.
A further characteristic of formative assessment, which is increasingly recognised as central to it, is the involvement of children. For this reason children feature at the centre of the cycle in Figure 12.3. The developing theory of educational assessment and various models within it emphasise the important role that children have to play in their own assessment, as they come to understand the process, to learn to work towards explicit standards or targets and to modify their performance in relation to constructive task-related feedback from teachers (Gipps 1994). We pick up these matters in Chapter 17.
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To summarise, the characteristics of formative assessment are that:
■ it takes place as an integral part of teaching;
■ it relates to progression in learning;
■ it depends on judgements, which can be child-referenced or criterion-referenced;
■ it leads to action supporting further learning;
■ it uses methods that protect validity rather than reliability;
■ it uses information from children’s performance in a variety of contexts;
■ it involves children in assessing their performance and deciding their next steps.
Summative assessment
Summative assessment has an important but different role in children’s education.
Its purpose is to give a summary of achievement at various times, as required. As noted in Chapter 18, it can be achieved by summing up (summarising evidence already used for formative purposes), checking up (giving a test or special task) or a combination of these. Since its purpose is to report achievement to parents, other teachers, children, school governors etc., the reliability of the judgements is important and the criteria have to be used uniformly. Thus, if the summary is based on a review of evidence gathered during teaching, some form of moderation, or procedure for quality assurance, is required. So the characteristics of summative assessment are that:
■ it takes place at certain intervals when achievement has to be reported;
■ it relates to progression in learning against public criteria;
■ it enables results for different children to be combined for various purposes because they are based on the same criteria;
■ it requires methods that are as reliable as possible without endangering validity;
■ it involves some quality assurance procedures;
■ it should be based on evidence relating to the full range of learning goals.
The difference between these two purposes of assessment should be kept very clearly in mind, especially when both are carried out by teachers. It is too often assumed that assessment that is carried out frequently is formative, or that all assessment by teachers is formative. Unless the assessment is used to help the ongoing learning, this is not the case. Where this happens the true value of formative assessment will not be realised. We now turn to explain why formative assessment is so important, particularly in science.
Summary
This chapter has provided an introduction to Part 3 of the book and to some of the concepts involved in assessment. The main points have been:
■ Assessment involves judgements about evidence of children’s achievement.
How it is carried out depends on its purpose.
■ The purposes considered in this book are assessment for a formative purpose (assessment for learning) and assessment for a summative purpose (assessment of learning).
■ The process of assessment involves deciding on relevant evidence, collecting it and making inferences or judgements by comparing it against expectations.
■ Judgements can be made by comparing against norms, criteria of performance or the child’s previous achievement.
■ Depending on the purpose of the assessment, different emphasis is laid on reliability (dependability of the judgement) and validity (how well it reflects what it is intended to assess).
■ The characteristics of formative and summative assessment differ more in timing and use of the judgements than in the methods used for collecting information.
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