Assessment in education is undoubtedly considered to be a major component of learning evaluation process. It is commonly used to determine the amount of skills and competences a particular student has acquired and to provide an accountability measure for educational systems as a whole. However, a great deal of assessment practices widely used nowadays, in spite of serving certification well, are not well feasible for improving learning. Alternative assessments, based on cognitive theory approaches to knowledge and learning, need to be developed and wide scale implemented. The core issue with assessment is that teachers are constantly searching for new changing trends in teaching, spending more time on planning the teaching process and less on improving the learning environment and implementing the assessment for learning and motivation. Evaluation of students` achievement which dominated until recently as the assessment in classes is being replaced by the formative in-class assessment which gives priority to students` needs using various teaching strategies and techniques to benefit their learning, making it motivated. Formative assessment, which is being integrated by the assessment within instruction, aimed at increasing learning, can complement to summative assessment or even replace it in many situations.
Obstacles and constraints in implementing formative assessment
Classroom assessment plays a significant role in teaching and learning process. It is regarded as one of the crucial obligation for teachers that can serve two purposes: formative associated to assessment for learning and summative – assessment of learning, the latter playing the first fiddle. In spite of the teachers` awareness about the importance of the implementation of formative assessment in increasing student achievement in learning, not many of them practice it due to some reason. Based on the survey gained by English Education Department, Universitas PGRI Semarang, Indonesia, it is found that teachers face some difficulties in implementing formative assessments in their classroom. They investigated the main obstacles in doing it. The study applied a survey and qualitative research. Despite the fact that figures of the investigation had proved that teachers actually had positive attitude toward formative assessment, the majority of them rarely implemented it even they had understood well on it. As to the constraints the teachers were facing, three main reasons, more likely, obstacles were found out: their insufficient knowledge of formative assessments, time management, and lack of guidelines of formative assessment.
Referring to the results obtained, it can be summed up that, in spite of having good understanding of and positive attitude to formative assessment, a great proportion of teachers were proved not having practiced it in their classroom, unwilling to move from the comfort zone. They also believed that the ministry of education facilitating teachers with training on formative assessment would provide clear guidance for its implementation.
The impact of teachers` formative assessment practices
The critical role of formative assessment in guiding instruction of student learning has long been advocated. Feedback from the assessment enables teachers and students to understand their learning goals, to find out the gaps in their performance, and to effectively apply actions to reduce them. Students engaged with feedback can extend, refine, and deepen their understandings, have the opportunity to display their thinking and thus reach more advanced level of expertise. Formative assessment thus serves multiple cognitive and social functions in instruction and learning adapting teaching and learning for the benefit of student learning.
Formative for teacher and student
Formative assessment can be defined as, all those activities undertaken by teachers and by their students that provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. It may be used either as diagnostic in the beginning or summative in the ending aiming at benefitting the learning process both for teacher`s pedagogy and the student`s knowledge and skill acquisition improvement. To make it become a double-sided benefit, understanding the specific purpose of it is of crucial importance. It tends to be more formative for teachers when they use it as a tool of truly finding out the needs of the students. It is therefore possible when they apply creative and significant ways to help the students, thus providing a critical feedback and not just revealing the mistakes they made.
The implementation of formative assessment makes sure teaching and learning are in progress, that is, teachers are becoming more aware of what went well and how they can further help their students in their learning.
Formative for students
Students benefit from formative assessment when it provides them with meaningful feedback. It is about the way of reconsideration and not just error correction. Getting a sense of learning, students become active, participatory learners. And it is due to feedbacks and self-reflection working together. Students` critical reflection on feedbacks allows them to further master a particular skill.
Curiosity encouragement
Getting reflection through formative assessment, curiosity is initiated which makes students become inquirers, encouraging creativity and innovativeness among them. They begin to exhibit high order thinking skills which are of crucial importance and necessity nowadays. The students are involved into both problem-based and project-based learning which becomes formative when their curiosity is evoked.
Peer-assessment v/s self-assessment
When the students understand the learning goal, they can assess and realize what they need to achieve it. And the first hardest task is to make students think of their work in terms of setting goals. Self-assessment plays a significant role to get an overview of that work making it become possible for them to manage it in favor for themselves.
Peer-assessment is a unique valuable complement to self-assessment which allows students to learn by interchange roles of teachers accepting criticisms of their work made by peers more seriously rather than by the teacher. Moreover, they express it in language they themselves naturally use. Assessing their own work through discussion, they also mark the work of their mates in a mature and sensible way, thus encouraging themselves gain pride in well presented work which may be assessed by one of the peers. After a thorough and open discussion of the answer, mutual understanding and agreement are of critical importance to be reached. The students would rather interrupt a peer than a teacher when they need a question to be explained. And the teacher is free to supervise and reflect on what is happening, making helpful interference if needed.
Peer discussion supported by a teacher, if needed, teaches habits and skills to hold it, benefits self-assessment by helping students focus on their work more objectively, enabling them to clearly understand the aims of their work and realize each further step to a successful result. Encouragement in assessing students` own progress, enabling them to guide their own work is extremely important. Having become independent learners and being engaged in a reflective review of the work they have performed, the students can plan their revision effectively and understand how their work might be improved.
Partners sharing a transparent learning goal
A teacher applying a new learning environment through formative assessment changes his role, from a presenter of content to a mentor, a leader of the process of exploration who is focused on the development of ideas of the students involved, empowering them to become active learners. And the emphasis has to get the students doing more of the thinking and making it public, take responsibility for their own learning and at the same time making the learning more collaborative.
Conclusion
To sum the above said up, it should be admitted that in terms of teachers` continually revising and interfering in their pedagogical practices to assure maximum potentials of the acquired knowledge, formative assessments are supposed to be more formative for them than for students. And in case when the students are enjoying their progressive development, it becomes not less formative for them, that is, in terms of skills mastery and progressive knowledge acquisition. There is extensive evidence that the use of formative assessment can enhance the standards of learning and develop teachers` professionalism in way that they value. Specified learning goals throughout the instructional process help teachers constantly evaluate whether and how students are making desired progress and make adjustments or even alterations if needed. When the students understand the learning goal, they can assess and realize what they need to achieve it. And the first hardest task is to make students think of their work in terms of setting goals.
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