How Does Formative Assessment Support Student Performance?

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Formative assessment builds students’ skills at self-assessment and peer-assessment. Students become learning resources for one another. They learn to give and receive feedback from others to improve their work. After doing some tasks given by teachers, students review their peers’ work according to the set assessment criteria. Students who act as “assessor” have the opportunity to understand better assessment criteria. It encourages and motivates them to learn more deeply and meaningfully rather than gaining knowledge of the fact and having their own perspective of the assessment task in comparison to their peers. Directly or indirectly, it helps them to develop a range of effective learning strategies.

Other than that, formative assessment provides immediate useful feedback to teachers and students. They do not have to wait for weeks or months to deliver feedback. Effective, comprehensive and timely feedback is important for students’ learning. It enables students to identify their strengths and weaknesses throughout the learning process. They will be aware of the gaps between their current knowledge and the desired goals. Then, students are able to revise and improve their work products and deepen understandings. However, to be truly helpful to students, the feedback given by teachers must focus on the task, not the student. It must be non-evaluative, timely, specific and related to the learning goals. Students must understand the feedback and make use of it. The feedback can improve students’ self-awareness, self-confidence and enthusiasm to learn. Undoubtedly, this can surely move the students learning forward.

Formative assessment also provides examples of learning goals including the specific grading criteria or rubrics to evaluate students’ work. They are able to know examples and models of strong and weak work. They know the clear learning targets, know where they are at in regards to the learning target and know what they can do to close the gap. It gives them clear guidance on how to improve their learning. With the frequent assessment and regular descriptive feedback, students will be more familiar and well-prepared to face the summative assessment.

To conclude, formative assessment is one of the most effective forms of assessment to support students’ performance. If it is properly carried out, it will be the lever for improving teaching practice and student learning.