1. The concepts involved in Assessment for Learning

Assessment for Learning and Formative Assessment
This section clarifies the understanding of FA and AfL adopted in the current study. The discussion draws out a number of key differences between FA and AfL with reference to the timing, purpose, participants and beneficiaries of the assessment process.
This study adopts the distinction between the functions and purposes of assessment proposed by Wiliam (2011). In his discussion of the differences between AfL and FA, Wiliam (ibid.) argues that AfL focuses on the purpose of assessment, whereas FA focuses on its function. He quotes Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall and Wiliam (2003) to demonstrate that AfL may be designed to collect information that can promote learning but it does not become ‘formative’ until that evidence is actually used to benefit the learning process. However, this reasoning seems strictly theoretical, in that, if an
assessment procedure is designed to benefit learning but consequently the evidence is not used to that end, it raises questions about the quality of the teaching/assessment.Nevertheless, the terminology seems helpful for distinguishing between the terms formative and for learning.
The notion of outcomes seems of central importance in defining FA and AfL. For example, the Assessment Reform Group in England defined AfL as:
the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there (ARG, 2002, p. 2–3).
This definition was published together with ten principles (Appendix 1) that further defined AfL as an integral part of teaching and learning and recognised the importance of the affective aspect of assessment. However, neither the definition nor the principles clarified how to set learning goals (sometimes referred to as ‘next steps’ in learning). Hence, it seems that it was largely down to teachers to decide how to enact these principles. Conceivably, in educational cultures where curriculum objectives are tightly prescribed, teachers tended to interpret AfL as a means to setting attainment targets that were specified in the curriculum. This has led to calls for more genuine AfL (Swaffield, 2011) and for ensuring a better understanding of AfL by teachers (Harlen, 2005).
A more recent definition of AfL emphasises the importance of the timing, and indirectly the beneficiaries, of the assessment process. It states that AfL involves:
Students and teachers, using evidence of learning to adapt teaching and learning, to meet immediate learning needs, minute-to-minute and day-by-day.
This definition highlights one of the distinctions between FA and AfL, namely, that the formative function of assessment is concerned with using evidence in the future to benefit teaching and learning. This may entail the use of data gathered through assessment to improve the teacher’s skills of delivering specific content (i.e. to be formative for the teacher/teaching but not for the learner/learning) or to evaluate and improve the curriculum (i.e. to be formative for the programme). A similar interpretation of the formative function of assessment is evident in the claims made by Broadfoot,Daugherty, Gardner, Gipps, Harlen, James and Stobart (1999) who propose that formative assessment can help teachers inform future practice while not helping learners further their learning. For assessment to genuinely be for-learning, it should benefit the learning process of the learners who are being assessed. This is why the immediate use of assessment evidence to benefit learning seems to be at the heart of AfL. With reference to timing and beneficiaries FA seems to be a broader term than AfL. This understanding agrees with Swaffield’s (2011) interpretation of AfL, presented in Fig.