What are the disadvantages of formative assessment

On February 4, 2020 by arnellebasi With 0 Comments - EdTech

There are a variety of pros and cons of formative assessment. In my opinion, I believe the pros outweigh the cons of formative assessment because if formative assessment is done correctly, there are no disadvantages to the student. Ultimately, this type of assessment is considered time consuming for teachers as they analyze results from daily assessments to provide detailed feedback to each student. In my future teaching, I would like to implement more formative assessment than summative assessment into my classroom, because I believe that the progress in student’s learning will become more evident.

What is Formative Assessment?

Formative assessments are a way that teachers are able to check the understanding of the students throughout a lesson, instead of waiting until the end of a lesson to test their knowledge. Formative assessments support the learning of students and allows for teachers to check for understanding.

Advantages of Formative Assessment

 The advantages of formative assessment include; that formative assessments are not graded, teachers are able to check for understanding, therefore if a student is struggling during a lesson they can get the help they need in class. Additionally, the most common form and example of formative assessment is ongoing feedback. If teachers are able to provide ongoing feedback, the students are able to make changes to their learning style or even adapt or change the way they are doing something, without being graded.When formative assessment is implemented, some of the benefits include: defined learning goals, increased rigor, improved academic achievement, enhanced student motivation, increased student engagement, personalized learning experiences, self-regulated learners and data-driven decisions.

 Disadvantages of Formative Assessment

Once again, if formative assessment is implemented well there is little to none disadvantages of formative assessment. Some of the downfalls, however, include; not having enough time to assess during a lesson, teachers feel rushed to complete a lesson, teachers may lack training on how to use formative assessment and if a teacher consistently uses formative assessment in their classroom, the students may not take it seriously.

Types of Formative Assessment

Some types of formative assessment include; teachers using summarising techniques, digital or non-digital portfolios, checklists, collaborative work, group projects and small achievable goals (goal setting). Other examples include; using round robin charts, strategic questioning, three-way summaries, think-pair-share, 3-2-1 countdown, classroom polls, exit/ admit tickets and creative extension projects.

When to use formative assessment?

The ultimate goal of formative assessment is to gauge student learning and adapt content correctly. Formative assessment should be used to monitor students learning progress during the lesson, or even when the teacher is teaching the lesson, by focusing on one or two students for different parts of the lesson, it will ensure all students are being assessed. However, this is one of many strategies.

Below is a link to a video, which discusses what formative assessment is and some strategies and examples to go along with it:

http://https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-formative-assessment-strategies-examples.html

What is the difference between Formative and Summative Assessment:

Dr. Tommi Eränpalo

Research shows indisputably that assessment guides student learning more than any other factor in teaching. Students are sensitive to their own learning process and they reflect at every turn to the assessment given. They will adjust their ways of studying, according to how their performance is assessed on the course at hand. For these reasons, the teacher has a great power and responsibility when choosing the most suitable assessment methods to support their learning. 

Lately in the field of Finnish education, especially after the latest curriculum reform 2016, there has been a lot of discussion about formative assessment and how to enhance it. The goal of formative assessment is to monitor students making headway during the learning process by providing ongoing feedback that can be used by teachers, to improve their teaching and by students to improve their performance. 

Formative assessment means its simplest continuous and guiding feedback on the learning outcomes. The evaluator in this process can be the students themselves, the teacher, another student or even the parents. The more the merrier. The time perspective for this type of assessment is both present and future. The purpose is to understand what curriculum goals the student already knows, how well and what one should do next to achieve higher performance and grades.

PROS OF FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT:

While studying in a student-centered way, formative assessment can help the student decide whether one wants to repeat things, practice the current skill, or start learning to the next level. Such decision-making requires the student to possess relatively good metacognitive skills as well as a clear-cut map of the outcomes and aims of the studies in question. If the students are given the power to decide, they can develop their learning skills according to their need, take ownership of their own learning and determine how high they want to aim and develop in the future.

Finnish board of education (OPH) gives five significant areas for formative assessment:

• Student projects
• Problem solving skills
• Teamwork skills
• Information retrieval
• Utilization of ICT

There are a number of different methods for formative assessment, each of which has different purpose and effects. attention is paid to how often progress is assessed, who is the assessor and who to be assessed. Here are some examples:

1.Analysis of Student Work

A great deal of information can be learned from students’ work orientation, how they manage individual work, group work, hands on activities and etc. Especially if the students are required to explain their thinking during the process. When teachers take the time to analyze student work, they gain knowledge about:

• Student’s current knowledge, attitudes, and skills about subject matter
• Strengths, weaknesses, and learning styles
• Needs for further, or special, assistance

The analysis of students’ classroom work allows teachers to modify their instruction so that they will be more effective in the future.

2. Questioning Strategies

Questioning strategies may be used with individuals, small groups, or the entire class. Effective formative assessment strategies involve asking students to answer well-thought-out, higher-order questions such as “why” and “how.” Higher-order questions require more in-depth thinking from the students, and help the teacher discern the level and extent of the students’ understanding.

Another strategic questioning strategy used in formative assessment is to give the students a “wait time” to respond. Studies have found that most students become more engaged in classroom dialogue when higher-order questions are combined with a wait period.

3. Think-Pair-Share

This is one of the many formative assessment strategies that is simple for teachers to use. The instructor asks a question, and students write down their answers. Students are then placed in pairs or small groups to discuss their responses.

Teachers are able to move around the classroom and listen to various discussions, gaining insight into an individual’s levels of understanding. After a time, the students discuss their responses with the entire class.

Research has indicated that when students are responsible for their own learning, their performance is enhanced. This is another benefit of formative assessment strategies, especially this one.

4. Color signals

Color signals (self-assessment): Students are provided different colored signs. They evaluate their progress as they go to the teacher and other students in the classroom. With the colors they can message how they proceed. The teacher can define the colors and their messages themselves or with the students. This definition has a very important operational guiding role, so the teacher has to decide what pedagogical approach he wants to use in the assessment. Here is one example:

Green = All Ready. I will decide for myself what I will do next.

Yellow = I practice and still work, I don't need help now.

Red = I'm stuck, I need help, so I can get forward

5. Student Peer Assessment

Peer assessment is the assessment of students' work by other students of equal status. Students often address oneself to peer assessment in conjunction with formal self-assessment. They reflect on their own efforts, and extend and enrich this reflection by exchanging feedback on their own and their peers' work. Peer assessment is a powerful meta-cognitive tool. It engages students in the learning process and develops their capacity to reflect on and critically evaluate their own learning. It supports the development of critical thinking, interpersonal and other skills, as well as enhancing understanding within the field of knowledge of a discipline.

Peer assessment is often undertaken with group assessment. Typically, the members of a group assess the performance of their peers in terms of their contribution to the group's work.

Clear pros for formative assessments are that these methods help students to identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need further work. These methods also help teachers to recognize where students are struggling and address more guidance immediately when needed.

CONS OF FORMATIVE ASSESMENT:

The nature of formative assessment is to promote learning, to give feedback and activate students. Even so, formative assessment can be tricky when it comes to providing information for final grades. When teachers are using various quizzes and tests for grading, it’s relatively reliable in terms of evidence. Test patterns that are based on subject outcomes (summative assessment) are giving exact tabulation for student competence at the time.

Furthermore, Finnish curriculum advices teachers to take account that students and their performance are not compared and the assessment is not about the pupils' personality, temperament or other personal qualities. Assessment is executed reflecting on the curriculum outcomes goals, and at the same time looking at the progress of one's individual learning in relation to the general curricular outcomes. The assessment should use a variety of methods. The teacher gathers information about the students progress in the different areas of learning and in different learning situations.

To give perspective to this problem, the Finnish curriculum promotes assessment that is encouraging and trying to create a supportive atmosphere towards learning, to create assessment culture where the key features are:

• Participatory, conversational and interactive approach for assessment
• Supporting students in understanding his own learning process and making the student’s progress visible throughout the learning process
• Fairness and ethics of evaluation
• Versatility of evaluation
• Utilizing the information obtained through assessment in the planning of teaching
• Much of the assessment is the interaction between teachers and students. Teachers ensure that students receive feedback and guidance on learning from the outset, as well as information on their progress and competence. 

From this point of view, formative assessment is meant exactly for this purpose; to extend quantitative data with qualitative information. However, this information is difficult to compile into percentages and Numbers. In the end, there will be a doubt of interpretation. Such an interpretative difference in the (final) grades of two pupils may lead to an imbalance in the final scoring that even affects pursuing to further studies. The major purpose of assessment in schools should be to provide interpretative information to teachers and school leaders about their impact on students, so that these educators have the best information possible about what steps to take with instruction and how they need to change and adapt in order to boost student learning.

” Until we see tests as aids to enhance teaching and learning, and not primarily as barometers of how much a student knows now, on this day, on this test, then developing more tests will add little, and will remain an expensive distraction . . .”

(Hattie, 2015)

Here lays a dilemma, effective formative assessments seem to be the key factor for effective teaching and finally effective learning. However, formative assessments bring out the student’s potential, which should not be mixed up with the student’s results. Teacher is in a difficult position, in a double role, being the teacher and the evaluator. Traditionally, more has been discussed of effective teaching or good teaching than effective assessments. Lately teaching is described as interaction between teacher and student. Interaction-based learning refers to collaborative forms of learning, and the creation of interpersonal relationships in teaching. Learning takes place through shared experiences and the creation of common knowledge, socially constructed. 

Still, it is not meaningful to separate assessment and its quality from learning and learning outcomes. The perspective of good assessment has been overlooked even though it is implicitly included in the concept of learning.

HOW TO COPE AS A TEACHER:

We all understand that formative assessment strategies in the classroom provide both teachers and students with invaluable information about what students understand, and what they don’t. These ungraded assessments are valuable guides for students to help them enhance their performance. They also help teachers determine if further instruction and support is necessary. This is the cornerstone for Finnish teaching-learning process - the cohesion between teacher and student. 

Evaluation should be continuous, interactive, and result-oriented. It should promote student autonomy and awareness of learning to learn. Students should have the opportunity to do and correct exercises as well as various project work and thus receive recurrent and encouraging evaluation.

 On the other hand, the purpose of the assessment is also to describe the level of competence and to distinguish good students for postgraduate studies. Not everyone can get the highest rating. 

When formative assessments are used consistently, and realistically, neither teachers nor students are surprised by their (final) grades. Some formative assessments can take just a few minutes, while others require longer periods of time and coverage. The key to successful formative assessment is to think ahead, when giving the assessments, how much each area of evaluation and each assessment will ultimately affect to your (final) grading. Lead and bind your assessment to curriculum content / outcomes and make it transparent for students and other stakeholders.

I wish you all good luck! :) 

Further reading:

Hattie, Masters & Birch (2015) Learning into Action, International Case Studies of Impact. Rutledge, London. 

Ouakrim-Soivio (2013) Toimivatko päättöarvioinnin kriteerit. Opetushalitus. Helsinki. https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/41026

Grant (1998) Educative Assessment: Designing Assessments to inform and improve student performance. Jossery-Bass. San Francisco.

Bacon & Bloom (1995) Beyond the herring sandwich phenomenon: A holistic constructivist approach to teacher education. Journal of Learning Disabilities.

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