The challenges and possibilities for improvement may vary across the three levels of an assessment system--classroom assessment, school or district assessment, and state-level accountability assessment. In this brief, the discussion of the challenges and possibilities focuses on these three levels and on two forms of assessment--formative and…

Most assessments adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to provide fair testing opportunities to all learners. However, this rigid approach to assessment may limit the ability for some learners to show what they know and can do. The Caring Assessments framework proposed a guide for the design and development of flexible, personalized, and adaptive…

The purpose of this study is to describe how university students rate the evaluation systems and strategies that have been proposed for use in Higher Education during the period of COVID-19 confinement and online teaching as a result of the coronavirus crisis in Spain. For this purpose, we prepared a descriptive study by means of an online…

This exploratory study of elementary school science examines questions central to policy, practice and research on formative assessment: What is the quality of teachers' content-pedagogical and assessment knowledge? What is the relationship between teacher knowledge and assessment practice? What is the relationship between teacher knowledge,…

Performance-based accountability along with budget tightening has increased pressure on publicly funded organizations to develop and deliver programs that produce meaningful social benefits. As a result, there is increasing need to undertake formative evaluations that estimate preliminary program outcomes and identify promising program components…

This article reviews the corpus of research on feedback, with a focus on formative feedback--defined as information communicated to the learner that is intended to modify his or her thinking or behavior to improve learning. According to researchers, formative feedback should be nonevaluative, supportive, timely, and specific. Formative feedback is…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of multi-drafting among college students according to demographic characteristics and measure its impact on students' achievements. Design/methodology/approach: The research was conducted in two stages. First, a preliminary research based on data from the Highlearn web-based content…

The purpose of this qualitative exploratory study was to identify factors that influenced prospective and experienced secondary level science teachers' reasoning as they evaluated or selected tasks to formatively assess their students' understanding of scientific concepts. The analysis of the coded written responses revealed two categories of…

This study aimed to provide evidence to guide decisions on the type and timing of assessments in a graduate medical programme, by identifying whether students from particular degree backgrounds face greater difficulty in satisfying the current assessment requirements. We examined the performance rank of students in three types of assessments and…

The author describes the evaluation planning done for the Project for Science Integration in Ghana, with emphasis on the contextual limitations in a developing nation concerning the teachers, students, authors, materials, and finances. With careful planning, it was found that illuminating data for instructional improvement could be collected. (SJL)

Steps used in the formative evaluation of a project designed to incorporate self-instructional materials in an introductory zoology course included techniques which: (1) involved colleagues in the material development; (2) assessed relevant student characteristics, expectations, and evaluations; and (3) were used in the examinations. (MBR)

Describes a study that developed formative, self-regulated multimedia self-assessment via the Internet of social-communicative competencies for social work students. Discusses a pilot study that was used to design guidelines for the development of the assessment instrument to incorporate students' perceptions, instructional preferences, and…

This book provides practical strategies and tools for assessing and teaching even the most hard to reach English language learners across the content areas. Syrja offers educators the latest information on working with ELLs (including using formative assessments) and provides a wealth of classroom-tested models and measures. These tools have…

Current thinking and research on the nature of formative evaluation of replicable forms of instruction are summarized. Methodologies appropriate for other evaluation roles (e.g. summative) are shown to be often inappropriate for the formative role. This paper attempts to classify sources of information concerning the merit of educational materials…

This report documents the measurement of learning outcomes and the formative/summative evaluation of courses as derived from the activities and experiences of educators in many fields of endeavor to determine how best to design courses of instruction and how to measure the learning outcomes resulting from courses. The report is divided into four…