Wood-Wallace, d (2016) ‘The Role of Assessment in Teaching and Learning’

Conclusion:

To conclude, this essay looked into the role of assessment in improving pupil achievement, looking specifically at how formative and summative practices impact on teaching and learning. It found that summative assessment plays an integral role in defining the curriculum, and that through summative assessments learning against the national standard is measured (Anneneberg, 2003, Taras, 2005). In addition to this, the study also established that assessment is instrumental in improving pupil achievement in school, and that through formative assessment and feedback; a deeper level of learning can be accessed (Black and Wiliam, 2001). The essay discussed my own experiences of using formative and summative assessment strategies, and identified some areas for improvement within my own practice. Lastly, the paper examined some potential criticisms and challenges of formative and summative assessment. It found with regard to summative assessment, a criticism is that it appears at the end of learning and so provides no opportunity to improve (Bergreen et al., 2016). In addition to this, it also found that SA is not useful for communicating complex data about a student’s individual abilities (McAlpine, 2002), and that as a consequence of only measuring standardised objectives the focus of teaching and learning can become too centred on ‘teaching for the test’ (Mansell et al., 2009). With regard to formative assessment, the study identified that a challenge is the time it takes to accurately identify and provide all pupils with a focus for

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Wood-Wallace, D (2016) ‘The Role of Assessment in Teaching and Learning’ The University of Nottingham (PGCE): Academia

improvement (Sasser, 2016), and that due to the results of formative assessments varying widely; there is a risk that data may be subjective or less accurate than that from summative assessment (Richards, 2013). In summary, the role of assessment in teaching and learning is to evaluate learning that is/has taken place and provide ‘an overall picture of learning’ (Timmis, 2013).

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