ES evaluación formadora / CAT avaluació formadora / EN formative assessment / FR évaluation formatrice / DE formative Bewertung

Formative assessment (Nunziati 1990), which focuses on the agents implied, is aimed at providing learners with orientation and support, in order to guide their learning and indicate degree to which they have improved. Therefore, it implies gathering and analyzing information continuously, providing constant feedback so that the pertinent reorientations can be implemented. Scriven (1967) suggests that so-called diagnostic assessment forms part of formative assessment, since, even though the diagnosis takes place at the beginning of the teaching and learning process, it is recursive in nature: it seeks to identify the students’ point of departure (initial assessment), as well as to meet the learning needs arising not only at the beginning of the teaching and learning process but also throughout its course.

Thus, from a socio-constructivist perspective, formative assessment is conceived as an interactive process which constantly regulates what has already been assessed, what has been learned, and what remains to be learned. Therefore, all learning activity is intrinsically an assessment activity, since it diagnoses both what the student needs and what he or she has already learned. So-called classroom-based assessment (Hill 2017) refers to all assessment carried out in class by teachers or students and has the same formative function.

References

  • Álvarez Méndez, Juan Manuel (2009). “La evaluación en la práctica de aula. Estudio de campo”. Revista de Educación 350,  351-374.
  • Hill, Kathryn (2017). Understanding classroom-based assessment practices: a precondition for teacher assessment literacy. Papers in Language Testing and Assessment, 6(1): 1-17.
  • Nunziati, Georgette (1990). “Pour construire un dispositif d’évaluation d’apprentissage”. Cahiers Pédagogiques: Apprendre 280, 47-64.
  • Scriven, Michael (1967). “The methodology of evaluation”. En Stake, R. E. (Comp.). Perspectives of curriculum evaluation. Chicago: Rand McNally, 39-83.
  • Veslin, Odile y Jean Veslin (1992). Corriger des copies: évaluer pour former. París: Hachette.