What are the biggest challenges to formative assessment?

In the hope of widening my understanding of the perception of formative assessment, or assessment for learning as some like to call it, and also the broad nature of the challenges we face in the classroom, I have started this collaborative document.

People from all over the world have outlined what they believe are the biggest challenges to implementing and sustaining systems or habits of formative assessment. I will be looking for trends within the issues raised and hope to write a post soon about some of the common themes identified within it.

Please consider adding your own contribution to the document by editing it here and leave a comment of anything you are beginning to notice once you have read through the ideas so far.

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This entry was posted by tombarrett on July 28, 2011 at 9:04 am, and is filed under Assessment, Crowdsourcing, Curriculum, Google Docs. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0.You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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Peter Skelton

Just having a quick read through the responses above and what I am struck by is how teacher centric they are. As I understand it formative assessment should be as much (if not more) about helping students to understand what they have learnt, how well they have learnt it and what they need to learn in future.

Much of the discussion above is focussed on how teachers should use formative assessment. Should we not be focussing on how students can assess their own learning and that of their peers?
Anonymous

Yes numbering might be an idea, so people can comment here and elsewhere – thanks. I intend to pull some of the comments and post about them on the blog too.

Do you think the author of that comment was simply referring to simple practical methods in the classroom and then suggesting staff discuss the impact of these ideas?
meiliwang

With technology, formative assessment will be exciting, although there are a lot of challenges to implement the system.
Appril68

Typical paper-based assessments at school are agonising process to both teachers and students in terms of organising,publishing, performing and collating. It is rather administrative job to teachers. Nobody deny that assessment is essential. However, it is demanded that new types of assessments should be introduced soon.
http://nwinton.wordpress.com Neil Winton

There’s lots to comment on here and it will take time to formulate a response, however, one immediate thought is as a result of this point (Could they be numbered for ease of referencing?): “All teachers need to use the same formative assessments and then discuss results” – To me, this is not formative but summative assessment. The nature of formative assessment is that it should aid the learner (be designed for the learner) rather than the assessor. If we start comparing formative assessments in such a structured way as appears to be implied by the statement, then we are more concerned with the value of the assessment. This is not what formative assessment means… or am I wrong?

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What are the biggest challenges to formative assessment?

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