Pupils' attitudes to formative assessment in sciences class

This paper discusses formative assessment in Sciences class, which integrates the knowledge of natural and social sciences. In formative assessment there are two different assessment processes – assessment for learning and assessment as learning. Both approaches value the idea of students’ individual progress, and they have a pedocentric orientation. The paper focuses on assessment techniques used in class, which is operationalised in the empirical section of the paper. We established a hierarchical structure of offered techniques according to the criterium of usefulness. The students expressed their views on the process of self-evaluation and peer-evaluation in four dimensions (liking, difficulty, help with learning and discomfort). The approach to research is quantitative. The results show that the techniques we can find at the bottom of the hierarchy are the techniques which require a more complex cognitive deliberation. There is a positive attitude towards self-evaluation and peer-evaluation. In establishing the difference between attitudes in the dimension of help with learning there is a lack of recognition of the potential of peer-evaluation. This paper confirms the importance of formative assessment and points to the need for further research.