FORMATIVE USE OF ASSESSMENT INFORMATION: IT'S A PROCESS, SO LET'S SAY WHAT WE MEAN

Abstract

The term formative assessment is often used to describe a type of assessment. The purpose of this paper is to challenge the use of this phrase given that formative assessment as a noun phrase ignores the well-established understanding that it is a process more than an object. A model that combines content, context, and strategies is presented as one way to view the process nature of assessing formatively. The alternate phrase formative use of assessment information is suggested as a more appropriate way to describe how content, context, and strategies can be used together in order to close the gap between where a student is performing currently and the intended learning goal. Let’s start with an elementary grammar review: adjectives modify nouns; adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Applied to recent assessment literature, the term formative assessment would therefore contain the adjective formative modifying the noun assessment, creating a noun phrase representing a thing or object. Indeed, formative assessment as a noun phrase is regularly juxtaposed to summative assessment in both purpose and timing. Formative assessment is commonly understood to occur during instruction with the intent to identify relative strengths and weaknesses and guide instruction, while summative assessment occurs after a unit of instruction with the intent of measuring performance levels of the skills and content related to the unit of instruction (Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis, & Chappuis, 2006). Distinguishing formative and summative assessments in this manner may have served an important introductory purpose, however using formative as a descriptor of a type of assessment has had ramifi cations that merit critical consideration. Given that formative assessment has received considerable attention in the literature over the last 20 or so years, this article contends that it is time to move beyond the well-established broad distinctions between formative and summative assessments and consider the subtle – yet important – distinction between the term formative assessment as an object and the intended meaning. The focus here is to suggest that if we want to realize the true potential of formative practices in our classrooms, then we need to start saying what we mean.