Constructing formative assessment strategies

Abstract

For years, formative assessment has been a popular topic for educational reforms across the globe. This form of assessment demands high level of student participation and teachers' continuous feedback during and after instruction time and is recommended as a useful means of learning for students in both the schools and higher education institutions in the twenty-first century. The current chapter discusses the underpinnings of formative assessment, being a newly promoted assessment concept in the education literature. It explores the main theories in formative assessment and its relationships with student motivation and self-regulated learning. The chapter further discusses exemplar formative feedback practices derived from this body of the literature, and they are research-based practices applicable to different classroom settings. Suggestions are made to recognize formative assessment as an important strategy of reforming education; this echoes the ideas of scholarship of learning and teaching (SoLT) in promoting professional learning for improving student learning.