Formative feedback is considered by many to be an effective technique for improving student performance on a variety of academic tasks. While formative feedback can be a useful teaching tool, there are specific requirements that must be met in order for it to be used effectively by students. In order to provide effective feedback, educators need…

Recent reforms in England and the USA give evidence that teaching methods and content can change rapidly, given a strong external pressure, for example through economic incentives, inspections, school choice, and public display of schools' and pupils' performances. Educational activities in the Scandinavian countries have increasingly become…

Given the longstanding role of grades in education, and their increased use for high-stakes decisions including student mobility, admission, selection, and accountability, this paper presents a systematic review of grading policies across all 10 Canadian provinces and 3 territories. In total, 23 policies were inductively analyzed for their…

This research focuses on the assessment literacy, that is, the understandings of assessment terminologies and how they relate to each other, in academic staff developers in the UK, collected via questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Academic staff developers have been trained and certified to support new higher education lecturers in…

In this paper we propose a method for the adaptive complex assessment (ACA) of the higher-order thinking (HOT) skills needed by students for problem solving, and we examine the impact of the method on the development of HOT skills in a problem-based learning (PBL) environment. Complexity in the assessment is provided by initial, formative, and…

When teachers ask questions or devise activities that encourage pupils to talk, they set up opportunities for assessment. To act on these data, teachers need to convert judgements into decisions about next steps and guidance for pupils on how best to move their learning forward. This is a complex process that requires skill and action, both for…

Every composition created by a young composer represents a step in the student's creative path. Assessment, an intrinsic aspect of teaching, fosters learning and propels students forward on their journeys to creative self-expression. Authentic feedback and assessment strategies must be grounded both in the individual musical context of each…

This chapter proposes approaches for assessing learners and evaluating courses and curriculum that could be used by directors of health professions education (HPE) programs to determine the effectiveness and impact of their programs.

To address chronically low primary school completion rates and the disconnect between learners' skills at the end of primary school and the skills learners need to thrive in secondary school identified in many low- and middle-income countries, more investment is needed to improve the quality of teaching and learning in upper primary grades.…

There are more than 700 articles exploring assessment in geography education. However, these papers vary in the degree to which recommendations and conclusions are based on research evidence. Globally, evidence-based practice is being prioritised, making it essential to understand exactly what the empirical research around this topic is saying. A…

Formative assessment can serve as a catalyst for increased student effort and student learning. Yet, many engineering degree programmes are dominated by summative assessment and make limited use of formative assessment. The present case study serves as an example on how formative assessment can be used strategically to increase student effort and…

This study focuses on teachers' use of informal formative assessments (IFAs) aimed at improving students' learning and teachers' recognition of students' learning processes. The study was designed as an explorative case study of four middle school teachers and their students at a charter school in the northeastern U.S.A. The data collected for the…

Hong Kong has been implementing a policy of assessment for learning to counter-balance the strong, high-stakes, summative, and examination-oriented practices of the territory. While the purposes teachers have for various classroom assessment tasks are devoted to this learning premise, their views are bounded by the social expectations of…

Continuous assessment is part and parcel of instructional process that has to be taken as a key tool in educational quality assurance endeavor. Thus, this article examined the actual practice of continuous assessment in primary schools of Chagni City Administration, Ethiopia. To address this purpose the study employed descriptive survey design.…

Evaluation denotes the monitoring of progress towards desired goals and objectives. The purpose of this study was to evaluate educational quality at schools using Stufflebeam's CIPP evaluation model (1983). The population comprised the principal, heads of each wing and teachers of various branches of a Welfare School System in Rawalpindi. Data…