Continuous assessment and formative assessment

With respect to formative assessment, Amedahe (2000) suggests that the system of continuous assessment in Ghana is supposed to serve as a mechanism by which pupils are given feedback on their performance by teachers, while teachers obtain some insights into areas of pupils’ learning difficulty early enough for intervention. This formative function of continuous assessment is to be realized through the systematic assessment of pupils throughout the course of the academic year. The explanation is insufficient to suggest that the continuous assessment is formative assessment.

In the UK, the Assessment Reform Group, the ARG (2002) explains that ‘formative assessment’ itself is open to a variety of interpretations and often means no more than that assessment is carried out frequently and is planned at the same time as teaching. However, the ARG notes that generally teacher assessment involves only marking and feeding back grades or marks to pupils. Though carried out by teachers such assessment has increasingly been used to sum up learning; it has a summative rather than formative purpose.

According to the ARG (2002) there is abundant evidence from reports of school inspections that the use of assessment to help pupils learn is one of the weakest

aspects of classrooms across the UK. The situation is not different from other countries; Black and Wiliam (1998) synthesized the literature on teacher assessment and reported that there is sufficient evidence to show that similar situation exists across many other countries.

For her part, James (1998) argues that the requirement to report a teacher assessment score in terms of a numerical level attained by the end of the Key Stage, still demands that teachers should ‘sum up’ their teacher assessments by aggregating and reducing their supposedly formative judgments, based on criteria expressed in words, to the numerical form used in the tests. Teachers know that they have to produce a numerical ‘level’ to describe a student’s attainment, that concern tends to dominate and block their attention to detail that might have more formative value.

Black (2003) states that for any assessment to be considered formative assessment the first priority in its design and practice should be to promote pupils’ learning, provide information for teachers and their pupils to use as feedback to assess themselves and each other. Black and Wiliam (1998) point out that assessment practices in which lower attaining pupils recorded gains in attainments showed enhanced formative assessment procedures. According to Black and Wiliam those studies showed evidence of the provision of effective feedback to pupils, the active involvement of pupils in their own learning, adjustment in teaching to take account of the results of assessment, a recognition of the profound influence assessment has on motivation and self-esteem of pupils, both of which have crucial influences on learning, and the need for pupils to be able to assess themselves and understand how to improve.

Additionally, there has been debate among commentators and writers on teacher assessment concerning the terms ‘formative assessment’ and ‘assessment for learning’. Stiggins (2002) argues that it is tempting to equate the idea of assessment for learning with the more common term ‘formative assessment’; but the two are not the same. Indeed formative assessment does not necessarily have all the characteristics of helping learning. It may be formative in helping the teacher to identify areas where more explanation or practice is needed. But for the pupils, the marks or remarks on their work may tell them about their success or failure but not about how to make progress towards further learning.

According to Stiggins (2002) assessment for learning must involve pupils in the process. When teachers assess for learning, they use the classroom assessment process and the continuous flow of information about pupil attainment that it provides in order to advance, not merely check on, student learning. Teachers do this by:

• Understanding and articulating in advance of teaching the attainment targets that their students are to hit;

• Informing their pupils about those learning goals, in terms that pupils understand, from the very beginning of the teaching and learning process; • Becoming assessment literate and thus able to transform their expectations

into assessment exercises and scoring procedures that accurately reflect pupil attainment;

• Using classroom assessments to build pupils’ confidence in themselves as learners and help them take responsibility for their own learning, so as to lay a foundation for lifelong learning; and

• Actively involving pupils in communicating with their teacher and their families about their attainment status and improvement (p. 4-5).

Furthermore, Watkins (2007) argues that assessment for learning is used in a general way in many countries to refer to qualitative assessment procedures that inform decision-making about teaching methods and the next steps in a pupil’s learning. Class teachers and the professionals that work with teachers usually carry out these procedures in classrooms. However, it has a very specific meaning in the UK, the Assessment Reform Group (2002) cited by Watkins (2007) defines assessment for learning as the:

process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there (p 67).

It is noteworthy, other authorities such as, Black and Wiliam (2006a), Harlen (2006a), the ARG (2002) and Weeden et al. (2002) use the terms interchangeably. Elaborating on the use of the concepts, Harlen (2006a) explains that where individual pupils are concerned, the important distinction is between assessment for formative and summative purposes. Using the terms ‘formative assessment’ and ‘summative assessment’ can give the impression that these are different kinds of assessment or are linked to different methods of gathering evidence. This is not the case; what matters is how the information is used. It is for this reason that the terms ‘assessment for learning’ and ‘assessment of learning’ are sometimes preferred. In this study the term ‘formative assessment’ and ‘assessment for learning’ are used synonymously.