What Does Research Say the Benefits of Formative Assessment Are?
(PDF) For most of the last century, assessment was seen as a way of finding out what students had learned. People argued about different forms of assessment, such as standardized tests versus portfolios, because they disagreed about what they thought was important in mathematics education, but they agreed that assessment was primarily about evaluating the effects of instruction. However, toward the end of the century, researchers began to look more systematically at the role assessment could play in actually enhancing student learning instead of just measuring it—a distinction that has been neatly captured as the difference between assessment for learning and assessment of learning (Gipps and Stobart 1997). The definition given by Black and his colleagues (2004) is as follows (p. 10): Assessment for learning is any assessment for which the first priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting pupils’ learning. It thus differs from assessment designed primarily
