Introduction
Educational assessment is an integrated process of gaining information about students' learning and making value judgments about their progress. It is the process of documenting, usually in measurable terms, knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs. Assessment can focus on the individual learner, the learning community (class, workshop, or other organized group of learners), the institution, or the educational system as a whole. The final purpose of assessment practices in education depends on the theoretical framework of the practitioners and researchers, their assumptions and beliefs about the nature of the human mind, the origin of knowledge, and the process of learning. There are two forms of assessment used by educators: formative and summative.
Formative Assessment
Formative assessment, or diagnostic testing, is a range of formal and informal assessment procedures employed by teachers during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment. It typically involves qualitative feedback (rather than scores) for both student and teacher that focuses on the details of content and performance. It is commonly contrasted with summative assessment, which seeks to monitor educational outcomes, often for purposes of external accountability.
Feedback is the central function of formative assessment. It typically involves a focus on the detailed content of what is being learned,rather than simply a test score or other measurement of how far a student is falling short of the expected standard. This type of assessment aids learning by generating feedback information that is of benefit to students and to teachers. Feedback on performance, in class or on assignments, enables students to restructure their understanding/skills and build more powerful ideas and capabilities.
Formative assessment is typically contrasted with summative assessment. The former supports teachers and students in decision-making during educational and learning processes, while the latter occurs at the end of a learning unit and determines if the content being taught was retained. Formative assessment is not distinguished by the format of assessment, but by how the information is used. The same test may act as either formative or summative. However, some methods of assessment are better suited to one or the other purpose.
In the K-12 sector, formative assessment is more valuable for day-to-day teaching when it is used to adapt the teaching to meet students' needs. This type of assessment can help teachers monitor their students' progress and to modify the instruction accordingly. It also helps students to monitor their own progress as they get feedback from their peers and the teacher. Students also find opportunity to revise and refine their thinking by means of formative assessment. This assessment is also called as educative and classroom assessment.
There are many ways to integrate formative assessment into K–12 classrooms. Although the key concepts of formative assessment such as constant feedback, modifying the instruction, and information about students' progress do not vary among different disciplines or levels, the methods or strategies may differ. For example, researchers developed generative activities and model-eliciting activities that can be used as formative assessment tools in mathematics and science classrooms.
Summative Assessment
Unlike formative assessments, summative assessments provide information about how well students mastered the material, whether students are ready for the next unit, and what grades should be given. Summative assessment (or summative evaluation) refers to the assessment of the learning and summarizes the development of learners at a particular time. After a period of work, e.g. a unit for two weeks, the learner sits for a test and then the teacher marks the test and assigns a score. The test aims to summarize learning up to that point. The test may also be used for diagnostic assessment to identify any weaknesses and then build on that using formative assessment.
Summative assessment is commonly used to refer to assessment of educational faculty by their respective supervisor. It is imposed onto the faculty member, and uniformly applied, with the object of measuring all teachers on the same criteria to determine the level of their performance. It is meant to meet the school or district's needs for teacher accountability and looks to provide remediation for sub-standard performance and also provides grounds for dismissal if necessary. The evaluation usually takes the shape of a form, and consists of check lists and occasionally narratives. Areas evaluated include classroom climate, instruction, professionalism, and planning and preparation. This type of assessment is characterized as assessment of learning and is contrasted with formative assessment, which is assessment for learning. This is taught in many educational programs in the United States. It provides information on the product's efficacy (its ability to do what it was designed to do). It examines, for example, "did the learners learn what they were supposed to learn after using the instructional module? " In a sense, it does not bother to assess "how they did," but more importantly, by looking at how the learners performed, it provides information as to whether the product teaches what it is supposed to teach.
Another form of assessment used in the education sector is the performance-based assessment, which is a derivative of the summative assessment, as it focuses on achievement. It is often aligned with the standards-based education reform and outcomes-based education movement. Though ideally they are significantly different from a traditional multiple choice test, they are most commonly associated with standards-based assessments which use free-form responses to standard questions scored by human scorers on a standards-based scale, meeting, falling below or exceeding a performance standard rather than being ranked on a curve. A well-defined task is identified and students are asked to create, produce or do something, often in settings that involve real-world application of knowledge and skills. Proficiency is demonstrated by providing an extended response.
For those entering into the teaching profession it is important to understand the difference between formative and summative assessment. While different, the two types of assessments are best used in common, though there is no set way of determining just how frequently during a unit various formative assessments should take place.
Test Taking
Students taking an examination inside a classroom in 1940