In order to evaluate any educational aspect, information is required and assessment determines how this information is gathered. Lamprianou and Athanasou (2009) state that assessment can be a very helpful tool in education only if the application of assessment is done properly and is well organised. They recognise that many of the criticism that assessment receives is usually because it has not been applied appropriately. Generally speaking, education is concerned with issues that pertain to curricula, teaching methods or course materials and one major source of information about these aspects is the student. However, in order
to acquire information correctly, assessment is required and the type of
assessment we use should be determined by our needs (Firth & Macintosh, 1984). In the field of education, two kinds of assessment are used: formative and
summative. Formative assessment refers to the assessment of learning that occurs within the classroom to inform instruction, which enables teachers to make timely instructional decisions based on the students’ interaction in the classroom; this can involve formal and informal methods of collecting data from the students. It usually includes students demonstrating their learning, as in observations for example, performance tasks and portfolios; all these methods may be used as formative assessment if both the teachers and the students agree to use the data from such practices to come up with decisions informing instruction in the classroom. This idea of using formative assessment in order to provide information to students and teachers during instruction (not to assign grades) is generally agreed upon in the literature (Black & William, 1998; Fisher & Frey, 2007; Popham, 2003; and Reeves, 2007). Researchers often term this type of assessment as educative assessment and it is primarily used to aid learning and not strictly as a tool for evaluation. In addition to the above mentioned methods, formative assessment tools may also include tests, hand in hand with instruction in the classroom, to guide the learning and instructional process (McTighe & O’Connor, 2005).
Summative assessment, on the other hand, differs from the above type of assessment in that it assesses the learner after instruction has taken place. It is often conducted at the end of an academic year or term in the form of a test, final exam, projects or presentations that aim to measure or ‘sum up’ what the students have gained from the course. In summative assessment, grades, ranks and scores are often used to decide whether the student passes or fails a course or project (Popham, 2003; and Richards & Schmidt, 2010). However, summative assessment can happen throughout the learning process and not as one final exam at the end of the learning process. When this happens, this type of assessment is referred to as ‘continuous assessment’. Richards & Schmidt (2010) define it as “an approach to assessment in which students are assessed regularly throughout the
programme rather than being given a single assessment at the end. This is thought to give a more accurate picture of student achievement” (p.129). In some cases,
continuous assessment does not entirely replace summative assessment, but forms part of the final grade along with summative exam(s). For example, the ELI allocates 20% of students’ final grades to continuous assessment and 80% to summative assessment (See Table 4, p.97). “Continuous assessment usually involves a series of tasks that are individually assessed, though sometimes it is appropriate to add a final assessment to continuous assessment. It is best used when there are several distinct module learning outcomes which are achieved at definable stages during the module” (O’Farrell, 2009, p.5). However, Lynch (2001) disagrees with holding continuous assessment using psychometric summative assessment standards because they both stand on different philosophical grounds. He argues that continuous assessment represents an ‘assessment culture’ and this sort of paradigm cannot be examined from a psychometric ‘testing culture’.
Ronan (2015) explains that formative assessment works like a step-by-step guide for the teachers, which is useful for teachers and students alike, while summative assessment is designed to measure students’ achievement at the end of
instruction. In Saudi Arabia, as in many other Gulf countries, the weight given to summative assessment is always much greater than the importance given to formative assessment. However, the MoE in the KSA is currently conducting several initiatives to improve the assessment system in schools (Alotabi, 2014). Metaphorically comparing the two assessment paradigms, Scriven (1991, p.169) once said: “When the cook tastes the soup, that's formative: When the guests taste the soup, that’s summative”. So, for the teacher (cook) to assess instruction in the classroom (soup), formative assessment must be conducted (tasting); otherwise, when students’ (guests) knowledge (soup) is tested (tasted), it is summative assessment (too late to fix the soup). In other words, to take the comprehensive review of the students’ progress, they need to be assessed in a formative way and the responsibility of formative assessment should be given to the teachers. Then, only the teachers’ involvement will be possible and, as a result, their knowledge and skills would be used in assessment process. When it comes to judging and grading various types of assessment, some testing researchers are adamant that formative assessment should not be judged by the same criteria as conventional tests. In the same stance, Black and Wiliam (1998) state that when it comes to
formative assessment, grades and marks do not deliver as much formative effectiveness and also in some situations can be counterproductive, particularly with learners of lower ability. They advocate that what is needed is tailored comments and high-quality feedback to the students. Hattie (2009) also argues that non-experts in formative assessment tend to collect evidence of student performance i.e. grades and fall into the trap of evaluating the correctness of students’ responses. In the same vein, Gipps (2012) warns that applying psychometric standards on formative assessment would produce unreliable statistical assumptions.