Formative Assessment And The Effect Of Formative Assessment On Students Learning

Formative assessment is becoming a trend in the education system while the effect of this form of formative assessment on students’ learning is still under evaluation. This study aims to provide a greater insight into how effective engaging formative assessment helps motivate students to learn and boost their academic performance based on students’ past experience. Two different data collection methods are carried out in a local primary school. In a cohort of 120 students from primary one to six, questionnaires are distributed while interviews of six teachers teaching primary one to six and the school principal are carried out concurrently to explore their experience of formative assessment. It is expected to find out that formative assessment

Formative assessment is becoming a new force in the whole education system, particularly in the primary classroom as a way to improve teaching and learning (Hall & Burke, 2004). However, it is still not clear that whether formative assessment brings a positive outcome to student learning. One may note that students’ experience of assessment practice is a vital source of information on the nature of the relationship between formative assessment and learning (Weurlander et al, 2012). In order to better understand the relationship between students’ academic performance and the practice of formative assessment in classrooms so that more suitable education policy could be formulated with clearer insights, we would do a research in a local primary school to see the effect of formative assessment on learning by exploring students and teachers’ experience in the implementation of formative assessment. The specific research questions are as

Principal’s attitude on the effectiveness of formative assessment is vital for the successful implementation of an effective assessment method as he is the final decision maker of the assessment policy adopted in the whole school. While for the teachers, they are the ones who implement the assessment, therefore, their experience and perception as well as effective strategies in their mind are necessary to be understood. The interview will be under a rather exploratory approach that most of the questions are open-ended such as “what do you think about the formative assessment policy in the school?” which give more space for interviewees to voice their point of view and enable the collection of a more comprehensive set of data. All the interviews done with the teachers and principal will be audio-tapped so that it can be replayed repeatedly for data extracting and data analysis later. The effect of the assessment strategies suggested in the interviews will be observed in the observation stage later to see if they are really effective in involving students and help students