A Note: Formative and Summative Assessment in the Classroom (Dixson)

A Note: Formative and Summative Assessment in the Classroom (Dixson)

Two tools teachers commonly use to assess student learning of new material and knowledge of state standards are formative and summative assessments.

Formative assessments involve collecting data to improve student learning, while summative assessments use data to assess how much students know or have at the end of the learning process (American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and U.S. Measurement Committee).

School-wide formative assessment, a precursor to formal assessment, has led to an increased reliance on assessments among teachers in general. This increased use of formative assessments has led test publishers to develop and validate formative assessments that are based on national samples and produce scores that are more psychometrically robust than those typically developed and used by teachers.

Formative Assessment Wiggins (1998) asserted that “the purpose of [formative] assessment is primarily to educate and improve, rather than simply audit, student performance” (p. 7). Formative assessment has been defined as “self-assessment activities by teachers and students that provide information to be used as feedback to modify teaching and learning activities” (Black & Wiliam, 2010, p. 82).

Formative assessment comes in two main forms: spontaneous assessment and planned assessment (Cook, 2009). Voluntary formative assessment occurs when (a) in class, the teacher reads misunderstandings in students' body language and asks students about their understanding; (b) when the teacher asks students to provide examples of It is done spontaneously together.

Summative Assessments Summative assessments are “cumulative assessments that attempt to capture what a student has learned or the quality of his or her learning and to judge performance against some standards” (National Research Council, p. 25). Unlike formative assessments, which are typically used to provide feedback to students and teachers, summative assessments are typically high-stakes assessments and are used to obtain a final assessment of how much learning has occurred, i.e., how much the student knows (Gardner , 2010). Summative assessments are almost always graded, are generally less frequent, and occur at the end of a lesson. Examples of summative assessments include final exams, state exams, college admissions tests (e.g. GRE, SAT, LSAT), final performances, and semester papers.

Formative assessments should be used during class to help students learn the material both initially and throughout the learning process. Summative assessments can be used to assess how much learning students have gained and retained at the end of a unit, chapter, quarter, or semester. Additionally, sometimes it may make sense to use formative assessments summatively or summative assessments formatively, depending on the use of the assessment results (National Research Council, 2001).

For example, a teacher may give the class a test (usually a summative assessment) to assess topics that need to be covered or retaught, rather than calculating a final grade.

In summary, all assessments of understanding to feedback are formative (assessment of learning) and all assessments used to assess a student's knowledge at a specific point in time are summative (assessment of learning; Gardner, 2010).
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