Formative Assessment Issues Across the Curriculum The Theory and the Practice TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC MỞ BÀI GIẢNG GIÁO TRÌNH

Leung, C (2007) Dynamic assessment: Assessment for and as teaching Language Assessment Quarterly, 4, 257–278 Poehner, M., & Lantolf, J (2005) Dynamic assessment in the language classroom Language Teaching Research, 9, 233–265 Rea-Dickins, P (2001) Mirror, mirror on the wall: Identifying processes of classroom assessment Language Testing, 18, 429–462 Rea-Dickins, P (2007) Classroom-based assessment: Possibilities and pitfalls In J Cummins & C Davison (Eds.), International handbook of English language teaching, Part II (pp 505–520) New York: Springer Short, D., Gomez, E., Cloud, N., Katz, A., Gottlieb, M., & Malone, M (2000) Training others to use the ESL standards: A professional development manual Alexandria, VA: TESOL Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) (1998) ESL standards for pre-K-12 students Alexandria, VA: TESOL Winer, L (1992) “Spinach to chocolate”: Changing awareness and attitudes in ESL writing teachers TESOL Quarterly, 26, 57–80 Formative Assessment Issues Across the Curriculum: The Theory and the Practice PAUL BLACK King’s College London, England Ⅲ In the past decade, formative assessment has attracted a good deal of research interest in all subject areas, including second language education It is interesting to note that there is now a lively discussion on the relationship between assessment and learning among applied linguists and language educators In this short contribution to the Forum, I will attempt to map out some of the key developmental issues in formative assessment that may resonate with the concerns of language teachers and language assessment professionals The practice of formative assessment has been developed, in the last few years, in four main ways (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, & Wiliam, 2003): An enhanced attention to classroom dialogue, starting from a focus on the use of open questioning, but then broadening in scope to be enriched by a wide range of studies of such dialogue Peer- and self-assessment, helping students to become independent learners by engaging in the assessment of their own and one another’s THE FORUM 519 work through focusing on the aims of their learning and on the criteria by which its quality can be judged Comment-only marking, or dialogue in writing, acting on the finding that marks on written work not improve attainment, whereas formative comments so improve The formative use of summative tests, an extension of comment-only marking, treating test answers as an occasion for formative feedback This can also develop peer- and self-assessment activity if students either try setting test questions, which requires them to think about the purposes of the work to be tested, or mark one another’s test responses, thereby focusing attention on their criteria of quality This primarily pragmatic approach to formative assessment has given rise to theoretical questions, particularly because it has been seen as successful and has been widely disseminated, adapted, and distorted (Black, 2007) Some of these questions will be addressed in the following sections.1 Feedback is an essential element of all four of these aspects of formative assessment For both oral and written dialogue, the first resource for eliciting and responding to feedback is the teacher, who does so in a way designed to help learners make progress In peer- and self-assessment, the students can become resources for one another for the same purpose However, in a well developed whole-class discussion, they can also develop this role in the context of oral dialogue Thus while this first practice is obviously complemented by the second, it can also incorporate the third, and the fourth practice overlaps with both the second and the third Self-assessment is a key aim which all four may serve It helps to develop metacognition, which can be seen in the light of Ramaprasad’s (1983) analysis that the three key processes in learning are to establish where learners are in their learning, where they are aiming to go, and what needs to be done for them to get there The aim of helping students guide and improve their own learning is an important aim of education—some would argue that it should be the main aim The need for a clear understanding of the aims of learning is reflected in the current emphasis on target setting and on tracking students’ progress, which are seen as requiring frequent testing However, this emphasis often neglects research findings about formative assessment Broad targets, such as the levels in the U.K national curriculum, are too vague to help struggling learners along the often small steps that they need to follow, while, as I shall argue, frequent measurement can be counterproductive A more detailed look at oral argument can start with Figure 1, which represents the basic interaction between a teacher and a student The 520 The brief account given here is based mainly on a paper by Black & Wiliam (2009) TESOL QUARTERLY upper arrows represent the teacher addressing a challenge, a task, or an explicit question, to the student, and the lower arrows represent the response What is heard may not be what the teacher intended, hence the break in the first arrow: The student may misunderstand the terms used or may have an inadequate idea of what might count as an answer The skilful teacher may anticipate and try to minimise such problems, but difficulties of this type are inevitable The break in the lower arrow represents the reverse difficulty—the teacher may misinterpret the students’ meaning or intention The difficult task is to interpret a student’s response in the light of some theory of the thinking and motivation of the student who produced it Some theoretical models, notably those which focus on self-regulated learning (Greene & Azvedo, 2007), may be helpful The main features of this model are represented in Figure This representation oversimplifies the model, which explores the multiple interactions between the two sets of these elements (e.g., the standards deployed will relate to the identification of the task) and the cyclic processes involved However, Figure does serve to illustrate the complexity of the process and indicates the variety of reasons that might account for those student responses which may seem so strange that it is hard to see how they can be the product of thoughtful effort However, more is involved than a merely cognitive exercise, for the response may be controlled by a desire to protect one’s own sense of well-being (Boekaerts & Corno, 2005) For example, a learner may refuse to engage for fear of appearing stupid Dweck (2000) shows how important this dimension can be One implication is that a focus on marks and grades, on written work or in a regime of frequent testing, can positive harm by developing obstacles to engagement, effects which can be as harmful to the high achievers as to the low An obvious outcome of this analysis is that, if formative teaching requires that feedback should help to identify and address specific learning needs, then it will be strongly contingent, adapting the teacher’s best-laid plans to deal with responses which are often unforeseen and surprising The discussion so far has been limited to one-to-one teacher–student exchange; there is ample evidence that in most classrooms teachers FIGURE A Teaching Interaction THE FORUM 521 FIGURE A Simplified Model of Self-Regulated Learning conduct class dialogue as a sequence of such interactions, in that successive students may interact with the teacher, but not with one another (Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, & Gamoran, 2003; Smith, Hardman, Wall, & Mroz, 2004) In a more ambitious approach, a teacher may listen to several responses before deciding how to intervene or might bounce back the suggestion of any one student by asking others to propose alternatives or to evaluate what has been proposed This approach involves students acting as resources for one another, and in conducting the classroom in this way, the teacher can serve as a model for the way in which students should interact with one another in any learning dialogue A teacher can also enhance the quality of student’s involvement by allowing students time to think, and by encouraging them to discuss with one another, before calling for responses A simple indicator of quality in this scenario is the nature of the learner’s contributions, which can range from the utterance of single words or short phrases to whole sentences (Black et al., 2003) or whole paragraphs (Dillon, 1994) The aim is that the classroom should be a place where students are involved in thinking and in learning through discussion Detailed analysis of this theme can be found in van Lier (1996) and Alexander (2006) However, there is still a range of choices, between tight steering of the discussion, by clues and cues, to ensure that it keeps on track to achieve a given aim, and looser control to ensure that the outcome is more clearly in the hands of the learners The formative element, that is, the contingent interaction within a learning situation, is inevitably embedded within the strategy for the overall aim of the learning Other components of that strategy include the choice of the task or the question, designed by the teacher to help explore the relevant arena of learning, and the teacher’s choice, between alternative formative responses, designed to steer the discussion to serve the learning aims These issues may be further illustrated as follows In a typical science lesson, the teacher may aim to develop understanding of a particular 522 TESOL QUARTERLY concept in relation to experimental evidence that students may have collected However, if the lesson is designed to promote cognitive acceleration (Adey, 2005), a similar experimental exercise may lead to a discussion prioritising a different purpose—to develop students’ reasoning skills in relation to (say) proportionality, or the control of multiple variables Thus cognitive acceleration lessons, and similar examples (e.g., dynamic assessment, see Leung, 2007), are characterised by a design that is based on a very specific model of learning By contrast, in the concept-oriented science lesson, the teacher would be guided only by very general principles of learning, such as starting from where the learner is, or involving the learner actively through discussion Yet all the lessons considered in this paragraph may be making effective use of formative assessment practices By its focus on oral dialogue, the preceding discussion only begins to explore the place of formative assessment within a more comprehensive theory of pedagogy There is need to explore its other aspects, notably the theory and practices of students’ group work in relation to formative interactions, the optimum interleaving of group work with whole class discussion, and formative interaction in written exchanges THE AUTHOR Paul Black is emeritus professor of science education at King’s College London, England His research interests include assessment—both formative and summative— and the school curriculum in science, and design and technology REFERENCES Adey, P (2005) Issues arising from the long-term evaluation of cognitive acceleration programmes Research in Science Education, 35, 3–22 Alexander, R (2006) Towards dialogic thinking: Rethinking classroom talk York, England: Dialogos Applebee, A N., Langer, J A., Nystrand, M., & Gamoran, A (2003) Discussion based approaches to developing understanding: Classroom instruction and student performance in middle and high school English American Educational Research Journal, 40, 685–730 Black, P (2007) Full marks for feedback Make the Grade: Journal of the Institute of Educational Assessors, 2, 18–21 Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B., & Wiliam, D (2003) Assessment for learning: Putting it into practice Buckingham, England: Open University Press Black, P., & Wiliam, D (2009) Developing the theory of formative assessment Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21, 5–31 Boekaerts, M., & Corno, L (2005) Self-regulation in the classroom: A perspective on assessment and intervention Applied Psychology, 54, 199–231 Dillon, J T (1994) Using discussion in classrooms London: Open University Press Dweck, C S (2000) Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development Philadelphia: Psychology Press THE FORUM 523 Greene, J A., & Azvedo, R (2007) A theoretical review of Winne and Hadwin’s model of self-regulated learning: New perspectives and directions Review of Educational Research, 77, 354–372 Leung, C (2007) Dynamic assessment: Assessment for or as teaching? Language Assessment Quarterly, 4, 257–278 Ramaprasad, A (1983) On the definition of feedback Behavioral Science, 28, 4–13 Smith, F., Hardman, F., Wall, K., & Mroz, M (2004) Interactive whole class teaching in the National Literacy and Numeracy strategies British Educational Research Journal, 30, 395–411 van Lier, L (1996) Interaction in the language curriculum: Awareness, autonomy and authenticity Harlow, England: Pearson Education Principles for Large-Scale Classroom-Based Teacher Assessment of English Learners’ Language: An Initial Framework From School-Based Assessment in Hong Kong LIZ HAMP-LYONS University of Nottingham Nottingham, England Ⅲ Davison and Leung (this issue) describe the field of teacher-based English language assessment as having “much variability, a lack of systematic principles and procedures and a dearth of information as to the impact of teacher-based assessments on learning and teaching” (p 389) In this Forum contribution, I briefly explore an example of teacher-based assessment of oral English that has been implemented across Hong Kong (see Davison 2007; Davison & Hamp-Lyons, in press) and the ways which elements of practice have contributed to or inhibited the establishment of the systematic key principles that are needed to establish any form of large-scale alternative assessment As this issue shows, assessment for learning is different from assessment of learning Black and Wiliam (1998) have summarized five elements that seem to be essential in the effectiveness of any attempt to improve learning by applying formative assessment or assessment for learning approaches: (a) the setting of clear goals; (b) the design of appropriate learning and assessment tasks; (c) the communication of assessment criteria to teachers and learners; (d) the provision of high quality feedback (both oral and written); and (e) the conscious provision of opportunities for self- and peer-assessment Assessment for learning gives a real role to the teacher as assessor of her/his own students’ learning 524 TESOL QUARTERLY