Formative Assessment: Looking
beyond the techniques
Dr Jeremy Hodgen
King’s College London
Improving (mathematics) education
through feedback and formative
assessment
• Attainment, progression and standards over
time
• Teacher education
• International comparisons
• Primary and secondary
What are you already doing about
formative assessment?
Talk to your neighbour.
Identify one issue or problem.
What is formative assessment: a
working definition
• Any assessment directed at informing
learning
– What do you need to do next?
TEACHING  LEARNING
TEACHING ≠ LEARNING
TEACHING ≠ LEARNING
TEACHING ≠ LEARNING
TEACHING ≠ LEARNING
If you want to increase your success rate,
double your failure rate.
(Tom Watson)
The evidence …
• Origins: Bloom (1970s)
• Black & Wiliam: Inside the Black Box (1998) etc
• Numerous other reviews worldwide
– Natriello (1987); Crooks (1988); Kluger & DeNisi (1996); Nyquist
(2003)
• All find consistent & substantial effects on …
– Attainment and engagement
– BUT poorly described in practice.
More evidence …
• Hattie’s (2007) meta-analysis:
– Feedback is the most effective intervention in education
(effect size: 1.14)
• Wiliam (2007):
– Assessment for learning probably the most cost effective
way of improving teaching
– Better and more achievable than reducing class size or
enhancing teachers’ subject knowledge
Extraordinarily “successful” …
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Inside the Black Box: > 50,000 copies sold (UK)
Working Inside the Black Box: > 40,000
Mathematics Inside the Black Box: > 7,000
Embraced by DCSF / DfES, National Strategies
Taken up by schools
Hard to find a teacher who hasn’t heard of it
What people say: debunking some
myths and misconceptions
• “Don’t students need marks?”
The effect of marks & feedback
Marks only
Comments only
Comments & Marks
Gain
Attitude
None
Top
Bottom
All



Top
Bottom


All
None
The effect of marks & feedback
Marks only
Comments only
Comments & Marks
Gain
Attitude
None
Top
Bottom
All



Top
Bottom


All
None
Marks and Comments
Marks and Comments
What people say: debunking some
myths and misconceptions
• “Don’t students need marks?”
• “What’s new? Good teachers already do this
anyway?”
• “I already ask lots of questions”
Listening to students’ answers
• Evaluative
– Teachers know the answer
– Listening for the correct answer
– Often give clues: “Almost …” … “Nearly …”
• Interpretive
– Teachers don’t know how students will answer
– Why do they say that?
When Miss used to ask a question, she
used to be interested in the right
answer. Now she’s interested in what
we think.
What people say: debunking some
myths and misconceptions
• “Don’t students need marks?”
• “What’s new? Good teachers already do this
anyway?”
• “I already ask lots of questions”
• “If only I had the time …”
• “Our students couldn’t do that.”
• “It’s just a set of tricks.”
Looking more closely : Five principles
• Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning
intentions
• Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks
and activities that elicit evidence of learning
• Providing feedback that moves learners forward
• Activating students as learning resources for one
another
• Activating students as owners of their own
learning
Looking more closely : Five principles
• Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning
intentions
• Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks
and activities that elicit evidence of learning
• Providing feedback that moves learners forward
• Activating students as learning resources for one
another
• Activating students as owners of their own
learning
Looking more closely : Five principles
• Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning
intentions
• Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks
and activities that elicit evidence of learning
• Providing feedback that moves learners forward
• Activating students as learning resources for one
another
• Activating students as owners of their own
learning
Looking more closely : Five principles
• Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning
intentions
• Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks
and activities that elicit evidence of learning
• Providing feedback that moves learners forward
• Activating students as learning resources for one
another
• Activating students as owners of their own
learning
Looking more closely : Five principles
• Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning
intentions
• Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks
and activities that elicit evidence of learning
• Providing feedback that moves learners forward
• Activating students as learning resources for one
another
• Activating students as owners of their own
learning
Some broadbrush strategies
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Rich tasks
Sharing learning intentions
Questioning and dialogue
Marking and Feedback
Peer and self-assessment
Using summative tests formatively
Sharing learning intentions
• Today we are learning … to use capital letters
and full stops
• How could you share this learning intention
with students?
… scientific method
… English grammar
… Physical Education / Sport …
Improving classroom dialogue
• Some examples from UK classrooms
Improving classroom dialogue
• The power of wait time
– Increasing the range of students who answer
– Increasing the quality of answers
• More WRONG / partially correct, longer explanations
• Asking better questions
– Highly context dependent
• Saying less and listening more
Marking and feedback
• Two ideas:
– There are 5 mistakes here. Find and fix them.
– You seem to be confused about … Talk to Eeva
about how to work out the difference.
• Have you got some more ideas that might
work?
Peer and self-assessment
• The learning paradox
• It’s good to talk
• The value of being wrong
Using summative tests formatively
• Use to expand students’ conceptions of
learning …
He was not a very careful person as a
mathematician. He made a lot of
mistakes but he made mistakes in a
good direction … I tried to imitate him
but I found out that it is very difficult
to make good mistakes.
(Goro Shimura)
Start NOW
• Doing something is better than doing nothing
– Try something & evaluate whether it works
• Assess before or during teaching: don’t teach
student what they already know
• Teachers don’t have to do it all
Moving forward
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Keep it simple
Work with others
Give and ask for feedback
Mistakes are useful: Getting it wrong can be
helpful