Formative Assessment and Next-Gen Technotwits
Below are some words of caution from Margaret Heritage's paper, "Formative Assessment and Next-Generation Assessment Systems: Are We Losing an Opportunity?":
Yet what is striking in current discussions of next-generation assessment systems is that despite the evident connection between the processes involved in formative assessment, which Black and Wiliam identified in their 1998 review, and learning theory, the predominant paradigm for formative assessment in the U.S. persists as one of measurement – formative assessment, construed within a testing culture, as a test. This is not to say that an instrument cannot be used as a formative assessment – it can – in the sense that the information yielded can provide indications of students’ learning status relative to the “gap” that teachers and students can use to make adjustments to learning while that learning is developing. The point here is the relative emphasis given to formative