Assessment Terms

Assessment literacy begins with precision in our use of assessment vocabulary/terms/concepts. 

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Here's a glossary of assessment terms and useful references where these ideas were drawn.

Scriven (1967) was the first to use these two terms: formative and summative in the context of evaluation. Formative evaluation refers to evaluation “in the on-going improvement of the curriculum” (Scriven, 1967, p. 41). Summative evaluation, on the other hand, refers to evaluation “to enable administrators to decide whether the entire finished curriculum refined by use of the evaluation process in its first role, represents a sufficiently significant advance on the available alternatives to justify the expense of adoption by a school system” (Scriven, 1967, pp. 41-42).

Sadler (1998) refers to FA as “assessment that is specifically intended to provide feedback on performance to improve and accelerate learning” (p. 77). He added that FA “is concerned with how judgments about the quality of student responses (performances, pieces, or works) can be used to shape and improve the student's competence by short-circuiting the randomness and inefficiency of trial-and-error learning” (Sadler, 1989, p. 120). Wiliam (2011) built on this and positioned “providing feedback that moves learning forward” as one of the five strategies core to successful FA classroom practice. His premise was that “Feedback functions formatively only if the information fed back to the learner is used by the learner in improving performance” (p. 120).

Click here to read MOE's definition of FA & AfL https://assessmentliteracyforall.blogspot.com/search/label/Glossary

How Assessment for Learning (AfL) came about?

Contending that FA was often taken to mean more frequent assessments which were planned at the same time as teaching, Broadfoot et al. (1999) suggested assessment for learning (coined by Harry Black, 1986) and brought to wider audience by Mary James at 1992 ASCD in New Orleans. 

Stiggins (2005) popularized the term, from using frequent tests to different assessment methods to provide “students, teachers, and parents with a continuous stream of evidence of student progress in mastering the knowledge and skills” (p. 327). The emphasis was on student ownership of their own learning.

So AfL “is any assessment for which the first priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting students’ learning. It thus differs from assessment designed primarily to serve the purposes of accountability, or of ranking, or of certifying competence. An assessment activity can help learning if it provides information that teachers and their students can use as feedback in assessing themselves and one another and in modifying the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. Such assessment becomes ‘‘formative assessment’’ when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching work to meet learning needs” (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, & Wiliam, 2004, p. 10)

What is Assessment as Learning (AaL)? 
Another perspective of AaL from Torrance (2007):

“Clarity in assessment procedures, processes and criteria has underpinned widespread use of coaching, practice and provision of formative feedback to boost achievement, but that such transparency encourages instrumentalism. It concludes that the practice of assessment has moved from assessment of learning, through assessment for learning, to assessment as learning, with assessment procedures and practices coming completely to dominate the learning experience and ‘criteria compliance’ replacing ‘learning’.” (p. 281). The above abstract of the paper weakens rather than strengthens the case for learner autonomy.

What is Student Self-assessment (SSA)?

Self-assessment has been defined as “the involvement of learners in making judgements about their own learning, particularly about their achievements and the outcomes of their learning” (Boud & Falchikov, 1989, p. 529). The defining characteristic of self-assessment is “the involvement of students in identifying standards and/or criteria to apply to their work and making judgements about the extent to which they have met these criteria and standards” (Boud, 1991, p. 5, in Boud, 1995, p. 12).

References

• Assessment Reform Group. (2002). Assessment for learning: 10 principles. Retrieved April 20, 2020,from https://www.aaia.org.uk/storage/medialibrary/o_1d8j89n3u1n0u17u91fdd1m4418fh8.pdf
• Black, H. (1986). Assessment for learning. In Assessing educational achievement (pp. 7–18). London: Falmer Press.
• Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B., & Wiliam, D. (2004). Working inside the Black Box: Assessment for Learning in the Classroom. Phi Delta Kappan, 86(1), 8–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170408600105
• Boud, D. (1991). HERDSA Green Guide No 5. Implementing student self assessment (Second ed.). Campbelltown: The Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA).
• Boud, D. (1995). Enhancing learning through self-assessment. London, Kogan Page.
• Boud, D., & Falchikov, N. (1989). Quantitative studies of student self-assessment in higher education: A critical analysis of findings. Higher Education, 18, 529–549.
• Broadfoot, P. M., Daugherty, R., Gardner, J., Gipps, C. V., Harlen, W., James, M., et al. (1999). Assessment for learning: Beyond the black box. Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge School of Education. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004
• Crocker, L., & Algina, J. (2008). Introduction to classical and modern test theory. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
• James, M. (1992). Assessment for learning. In Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (Assembly session on “Critique of Reforms in Assessment and Testing in Britain”) held at New Orleans, LA.
• Messick, S. (1989). Validity. In R. L. Linn (Ed.), A nation at risk: The imperative for education reform. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
• Nitko, A., & Brookhart, S. (2007). Educational assessment of students (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Inc.
• Ramaprasad, A. (1983). On the definition of feedback. Behavioral Science, 28(1), 4–13. https://doi.org/10.1002/bs.3830280103
• Sadler, D. R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, 18(2), 119–144. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00117714 
• Sadler, D. R. (1998). Formative Assessment: Revisiting the territory. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 77–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969595980050104
• Sadler, D. R. (2005). Interpretations of criteria-based assessment and grading in higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 30(2), 175–194.
• Sadler, D. R. (2007). Perils in the meticulous specification of goals and assessment criteria. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 14(3), 387–392. https://doi.org/10.1080/09695940701592097
• Scriven, M. (1967). The methodology of evaluation. In Perspectives of curriculum evaluation (pp. 39–83). Chicago, IL: Rand McNally. Retrieved from https://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=the+methodology+of+evaluation+scriven&btnG= &hl=de&as_sdt=0,5#0
• Stiggins, R. (2005). From formative assessment to assessment for learning: A path to success in standards-based schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 87(4), 324–328. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170508700414
• Torrance, H. (2007). Assessment as learning? How the use of explicit learning objectives, assessment criteria and feedback in post‐secondary education and training can come to dominate learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 14(3), 281– 294. https://doi.org/10.1080/09695940701591867
• Western and Northern Canadian Protocol for collaboration in education. (2006). Rethinking classroom assessment with purpose in mind: Assessment for learning, assessment as learning, assessment of learning. Retrieved December 22, 2017, from https://www.wncp.ca/media/40539/rethink.pdf
• Wiliam, D. (2011). Embedded formative assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.