ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a review of the literature on classroom formative assessment. Several studies show firm evidence that innovations designed to strengthen the frequent feedback that students receive about their learning yield substantial learning gains. The perceptions of students and their role in self-assessment are considered alongside analysis of the strategies used by teachers and the formative strategies incorporated in such systemic approaches as mastery learning. The term formative assessment has a long history in education, with it usually being attributed to M. Scriven, however as P. Black and D. Wiliam state, formative assessment “does not have a tightly defined and widely accepted meaning”. This points to a core problem in the implementation of the research, namely that it’s often a kind of crystal ball through which anyone can see anything they want.
