22           Assessment
                           With and
                      for Students
            heword“assessment”comesfromtheLatinverb“assidere,”meaning“to
          Tsitwith.”Thiswordoriginimpliesthatinassessmenttheteachersitswith
          the learner and assessment is something teachers do with and for students
          rather than to students (Green, 1998).
            Formative assessment, in particular, is something teachers do with and
          for students. Teachers involve students with them in the assessment, thus
          students and teachers are partners, both sharing responsibility for learning.
          Formative assessment provides evidence for improving student learning.
          Indeed, to emphasize this function, it is often referred to as “assessment for
          learning.” Lorna Earl (2003) also uses the phrase “assessment as learning,”
          signaling the active role students play in the process.
            Amajorlandmark in the emergence of formative assessment was a syn-
          thesis of research findings from conducted by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam
          in 1998.This review, and the more commonly read Phi Delta Kappan article
          in the same year, led to the widespread recognition of formative assessment
          as a powerful method for improving all students’ learning. They concluded
          that student learning gains triggered by formative assessment were “amongst
          the largest ever reported for educational interventions,” with the largest gains
          being realized by low achievers (1998b, p. 141).This was, and remains, pow-
          erful evidence for the value of formative assessment.
            Based on their review, Black and Wiliam determined that effective for-
          mative assessment occurs
            • whenteachers make adjustments to teaching and learning in response
             to assessment information;
                                          • 7
       8 • Formative Assessment
            • when students receive feedback about their learning, with advice on
             what they can do to improve; and
            • when students are involved in the process through peer and self-assessment.
            Notice that Black and Wiliam refer to the “process” of formative assessment.
          Formative assessment is not a thing—it is not a single test given to students to
          see what they have learned for the purpose of grading, placement, or classi-
          fication. That is the function of summative assessments like an end-of-unit
          classroom test, the quarterly benchmark test, or the annual state test. Instead,
          formative assessment is a process that occurs during teaching and learning and
          involves both teachers and students in gathering information so they can take
          steps to keep learning moving forward to meet the learning goals.
            Lorrie Shepard, in her very influential 2000 presidential address to the
          American Educational Research Association, proposed a set of principles
          emerging from recent theories of learning as a framework to explain and
          integrate  the  findings  from  the  diverse  studies  reviewed  by  Black  and
          Wiliam. Among these were the following:
            • Intellectual abilities are socially and culturally developed.
            • Learners construct knowledge and understandings within a social context.
            • Intelligent  thought  involves  “metacognition”  or  self-monitoring  of
             learning and thinking.
            • New learning is shaped by prior knowledge and cultural perspectives.
            • Deep learning is principled and supports transfer. (Shepard, 2000,
             p. 8)
            She considered the kinds of assessment practices that are compatible
          with these principles, proposing fundamental changes in both the substance
          and purpose of assessments. In terms of substance, she argued that classroom
          assessments must be congruent with important learning goals, and they must
          directly connect to ongoing instruction. In terms of purpose, she called for
          fundamental changes in the perception of assessment functions.Assessments
          should be used to help students learn and to improve instruction, rather than
          functioning as “occasions for meting out rewards and punishment” (p. 10).
          Moreover, a reformed view of assessment should include not only clearly
          communicating expectations and intermediate steps to students, but also the
          requirement that students be actively involved in evaluating their own work
          (Shepard, 2000). Shepard’s presidential address, with its recommendations
          for a revolution in attitudes toward assessment, placed a premium on the
          process of formative assessment for teaching and learning.
            In this chapter, we will look at how the process of formative assess-
          ment works in the classroom, but first let’s get into a little more detail about
          what formative assessment is. You can see several definitions of formative
                               Assessment With and for Students • 9
               What Experts Say About Formative Assessment
            An assessment activity can help learning if it provides information to be
            used as feedback by teachers, and by their pupils in assessing themselves
            and each other, to modify the teaching and learning activities in which
            they  are  engaged.  Such  assessment  becomes  ‘formative  assessment’
            when the evidence is actually used to adapt teaching work to meet
            learning needs (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, & Wiliam, 2003, p. 2).
            The process used by teachers and students to recognize and respond to
            student learning in order to enhance that learning, during the learning
            (Bell & Cowie, 2001, p. 536).
            Formative assessment is defined as assessment carried out during the
            instructional process for the purpose of improving teaching or learning
            (Shepard et al., 2005, p. 75).
            Assessment for learning involves teachers in using a classroom assessment
            process to advance, not merely to check on learning (Stiggins, 2002, p. 5).
            Formative assessment “takes place day by day and allows the teacher and
            the  student  to  adapt  their  respective  actions  to  the  teaching/learning
            situation in question” (Allal & Lopez, 2005, p. 244).
            Assessment  for  learning  is  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 (Assessment Reform Group, 2002, pp. 1–2).
            Formative assessment is a planned process in which assessment-elicited
            evidence of students’ status is used by teachers to adjust their ongoing
            instructional procedures or by students to adjust their current learning
            tactics (Popham, 2008, p. 6).
            We see much more effective use of formative evaluation if it is separated
            from the grading process and used primarily as an aid to teaching (Bloom,
            1969, p. 48).
           assessment in the box above. Notice some of the key phrases these experts
           use in relation to formative assessment:
            • Information to be used as feedback by teachers and their pupils ...
            • Enhancing that learning during the learning ...
            • For the purpose of improving teaching and learning ...
            • Takes place day by day ...
            • Decide where pupils need to go and how to get there ...
      10 • Formative Assessment
            • Advance, not merely check on, student learning ...
            • By students to adjust their current learning tactics ...
            The function of formative assessment as a means to improve learning
          during instruction clearly comes through, as does the idea that not only
          teachers but also students are active users of formative assessment. In sum,
          formative assessment is a process that takes place continuously during the
          course of teaching and learning to provide teachers and students with feed-
          back to close the gap between current learning and desired goals.
          THE PROCESS OF FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
          Now we are going to look closely at the process of formative assessment
          shown in Figure 2.1. Each element of the process is elaborated in subsequent
          chapters. What is important at this point is for you to gain an overview of the
          process and its components.
            Note that the process is framed as a cycle, illustrating that formative
          assessment is continuous process, integrated into instruction. You’ll also
          notice that the end point of the cycle is “close the gap.” This is because
          formative assessment is intended to close the gap between where the
          learner currently is and where the learner and the teacher want to be at
          the end of a lesson. The idea of closing the “gap” comes from D. Royce
          Sadler (1989), who stressed feedback as the centerpiece of formative
          assessment. Following Ramaprasad (1983), he emphasized that informa-
          tion  is  only  considered  feedback  when  it  is  “used  to  alter  the  gap”
          (Sadler, 1989, p. 121). This means that the feedback generated from for-
          mative assessment must be used to make changes in the students’ learn-
          ing status and help them close the gap between their current status and
          the intended learning goal. When the gap is closed, another gap opens
          as student learning moves to the next stage, and formative assessment is
          used to close the gap once again.
          DETERMINE LEARNING GOALS 
          AND DEFINE CRITERIA FOR SUCCESS
          The process of formative assessment begins (at the top left of Figure 2.1)
          with teachers identifying the learning goal(s) for a lesson or a sequence of
          lessons and determining the criteria for success. As Figure 2.1 suggests, the
          learning  goal  is  derived  from  a  learning  progression  (more  on  this  in
          Chapter 4). The learning goal identifies what the students will learn during
          the course of the lesson or lessons. The success criteria identify what it