Checking In vs. Wrapping Up: Formative and Summative Assessment

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Checking In vs. Wrapping Up: Formative and Summative Assessment

Educational Psychology · Chapter 8: Assessment, Testing, and Making Sense of ResultsSection 8.2 · lesson 71 of 1008 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

Formative and summative assessment, and the feedback loop that connects them.

  • Define formative assessment and its distinguishing attribute
  • Define summative assessment and its real instructional value
  • Describe the five strategies of effective formative practice
  • Explain why feedback timing changes learning outcomes

Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,123 words). Read along, or search it.

Assessment, Testing, and Making Sense of Results

Checking In, and Wrapping Up

There is a well-worn line about assessment that is worth starting from. Weighing the pig does not make it heavier. That is true of some assessment, and false of the rest. This section is about which is which. We begin with formative assessment, which happens during instruction. Then the five strategies Wiliam and Black identified. Then summative assessment, and a misconception about it. Then feedback, and why specific feedback outperforms grades. And finally the feedback loop, which is the engine of the whole practice. Here is the claim to watch for throughout. What makes an assessment formative is not its format. It is its use.

Formative

Assessment That Happens During, Not After

Formative assessment refers to ongoing, low-stakes evaluation practices. The critical detail is when they occur. They occur during the instructional process, not after it. Summative assessments judge learning after instruction ends. Formative assessment works as a diagnostic instrument instead. It reveals what students understand in real time. That lets teachers adjust instruction before misconceptions solidify. The common strategies are all quick and cheap to run. Exit tickets, and think-pair-share activities. Whiteboard responses, and classroom polling technology. And quick quizzes, which look formal but need not be.

Immediacy

The Attribute That Defines It

One attribute distinguishes formative assessment from everything else. Immediacy. Data collected today directly informs tomorrow's lesson. Now push on that definition, because it has a sharp consequence. Suppose the data cannot change what happens next. Then the assessment is not doing formative work at all. It does not matter what you happen to call it. Which means a quiz can be formative, or summative. It depends entirely on what you do with the results. The format does not decide the category. The use decides it.

Five Strategies

Wiliam and Black on Effective Practice

Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black are pioneers in formative assessment research. They identified five key strategies of effective formative practice. First, clarifying learning intentions. Students should know what success actually looks like. Second, engineering effective discussions. Third, providing feedback that moves learners forward. Not feedback that merely reports a verdict. Fourth, activating students as learning resources for each other. Fifth, activating students as owners of their own learning. Taken together, those five change what a classroom is for. They shift it from a performance arena into a learning environment. One where mistakes are welcomed as diagnostic information. Rather than condemned as failures.

Summative

Assessment That Delivers a Verdict

Summative assessment sits at the other end of the process. It evaluates learning at the conclusion of an instructional period. That might be a unit, a semester, or a whole academic year. Its primary purpose is to make a judgment. Has this student achieved the intended learning outcomes? Final examinations are the obvious example. So are standardized state tests, AP exams, and cumulative projects. Summative data feed into grading systems and promotional decisions. They also feed into accountability reports. Because the stakes are higher, the quality bar has to be higher. Validity, reliability and fairness must be particularly rigorous here. You are judging a student, so the instrument had better hold up.

The Misconception

Summative Data Are Not Wasted

There is a common misconception about summative assessment. That it has no instructional value, because it comes too late. Teaching is already complete by the time the data arrive. In practice, well-designed summative assessments do several jobs. First, the assessment can itself be a learning experience. A final project that asks students to synthesize across a unit teaches. Second, the data travel forward to the next teacher. They inform that teacher's understanding of the incoming class. Third, the data guide curriculum revision. They help schools identify systemic instructional gaps. So the data are late for one student, but early for the next. That is only true if somebody actually reads them.

Feedback

Specific Beats Encouraging

The phrase assessment for learning captures the central insight. Assessment's greatest power is not certifying achievement. It is accelerating achievement. That happens when feedback is timely, specific, and actionable. Here is what usable feedback sounds like. Your thesis is clear, but two paragraphs need evidence from the text. The student knows exactly what to do next. Now here is what unusable feedback sounds like. Good work. Or, try harder. Both of those fail the student, and for the same reason. Neither provides any usable information about what to change. Research consistently shows specific feedback beats grades alone.

The Loop

Assess, Feedback, Adjust, Reassess

Formative practice runs as a loop, and the loop has four stages. You assess. You provide feedback. You adjust instruction. Then you reassess. That cycle is the engine of formative assessment practice. But notice the condition on which the loop actually closes. It closes only when students act on the feedback. And when teachers then observe whether the gap has narrowed. Feedback handed back and never revisited does not close anything. That is the most common way this practice fails in real classrooms. The comments get written. The loop never closes. So build in the moment where students respond to what you wrote.

Extending It

Bringing Students Inside the Loop

The loop can be extended, by bringing students inside it. Peer feedback and self-assessment do exactly that. They bring students themselves into the evaluative process. Students learn to identify what quality work looks like. They apply criteria to a peer's writing. And they reflect honestly on their own performance. That last one is harder than it sounds, and it is teachable. What all three build are metacognitive skills. Those are the skills that support lifelong learning. Consider what a student gains from this in the long run. Someone who can evaluate work against criteria has a portable tool. They no longer need a teacher present in order to improve.

At A Glance

Six Dimensions of Difference

Six dimensions separate the two kinds of assessment cleanly. Purpose. Formative guides instruction in real time. Summative judges achievement at the end. Timing. Formative happens during instruction, summative after it. Stakes. Formative is low, and often ungraded. Summative is high, and contributes to the final grade. Examples. Exit tickets, polls and quizzes on one side. Finals, state tests and projects on the other. Feedback. Immediate and specific, against delayed and summary. And use of data. Formative adjusts tomorrow's lesson. Summative grades, promotes, and reports. Read the last row again. It is where the whole distinction lives.

In Practice

Three Piles, and Five Minutes

Here is the whole loop running in one middle school classroom. Mr. Osei teaches eighth grade mathematics. After each lesson he posts a three-question exit ticket on the board. Students submit their responses before leaving. That evening he sorts the tickets into three piles. Got it. Almost there. Need reteach. The next morning he opens class with a five-minute targeted review. That review is for the need reteach group only. Meanwhile the got it group begins an extension problem. This structured loop has measurably reduced unit test failures. Research by John Hattie explains why the timing works. Feedback ranks among the highest-impact influences on achievement. But only when it is timely, and only when it is specific.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Checking In vs. Wrapping Up: Formative and Summative Assessment

What is the difference between formative and summative assessment?
Formative assessment is ongoing, low-stakes checking during instruction that teachers use to adjust teaching in real time, such as exit tickets, polls and whiteboard responses. Summative assessment judges learning at the end of a unit, semester or year, such as final exams, state tests and AP exams, and feeds into grades and accountability reports. The key difference lies in how results are used, not the format.
Can a quiz be a formative assessment?
Yes. A quiz is formative if its results directly shape what the teacher does next, and summative if it mainly records a judgment of achievement. Immediacy is the defining attribute of formative assessment: data collected today inform tomorrow's lesson. If the data cannot change what happens next, the assessment is not doing formative work, whatever it is called.
What are the five key strategies of formative assessment?
Dylan Wiliam, a pioneer of formative assessment research with Paul Black, describes five key strategies: clarifying learning intentions so students know what success looks like, engineering effective discussions, providing feedback that moves learners forward, activating students as learning resources for one another, and activating students as owners of their own learning. Together they treat mistakes as useful information rather than failures.
What makes feedback effective for learning?
Effective feedback is timely, specific and actionable, telling students exactly what to change, such as "Your thesis is clear, but two paragraphs need evidence from the text." Comments like "Good work" or "Try harder" give no usable information. Research consistently shows specific feedback outperforms grades alone, and John Hattie's research ranks feedback among the highest-impact influences on achievement. It works only when students act on it.

About the Educational Psychology course

How many college credits is Educational Psychology?
Educational Psychology (Psychology 120) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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