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Teaching and Assessment are two areas of education that are closely connected and the result of one is reflected in the other. However, the role of assessment is far more significant on students’ learning. If a teacher possesses good practices of assessment, his teaching will certainly be moulded accordingly. On the other hand, if the assessment practices are poor and focus on surface areas of learning, the teaching will lose its meaning and effective teaching will be simply impossible. Thus, assessment plays a significant role in teaching and learning.
Assessment in education is defined as the process of gathering, interpreting, recording and using information about pupils’ responses to an educational task. It is the treatment of this information that leads to two different types of assessment. When the information is collected with the intention to assess the learning outcomes in order to rank the students in grades and division, it is classified as summative assessment. In contrast, if the information is gathered to find the learning gaps, and aims to provide fruitful feedback for bridging the gaps, it is termed as formative assessment. Educationists can find lots of books on developing effective tests and books dealing with summative assessment, conversely, books and authors related to formative assessment are hard to come by. Also availability of a resource related to Formative Assessment specifically dealing with a subject, in this case science, is altogether an exceptional occurrence that truly makes SCIENCE FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT by Page Keeley a book extraordinairé. This book, like a dozen other from her, is once again a testament towards the author’s credentials that led her to receive the Presidential Award for excellence in Science Teaching and the Milken National Educator Award. Page Keeley has combined her passion for teaching and her professional experiences spread over almost two decades to create a toolkit that is sure to serve teachers immensely as they gear up to assume their classroom roles during instruction and assessment. The author’s style of interlacing assessment throughout teaching and learning is reminiscent of an artisan whose skillful weaving results in creating a masterpiece.
The book is organized in a very logical progression of ideas and contents starting with the theory and ending up with practical ideas. Altogether, there are four chapters in the book beginning with the introduction, leading to the question of integration of formative assessment in teaching, giving some considerations for the choice of formative assessment and ending on 75 practical strategies to be used in the classroom situation. A unique feature of this book is that it not only includes practical strategies of formative assessment, but also provides readers with step by step TO DO for each strategy. This feature brings an enormous benefit to teachers especially those who are looking for practical ideas that can be implemented in their classrooms without further ado.
The book begins with Keeley naming formative assessment as FACTs ( Formative Assessment Classroom Techniques) declaring that the techniques are an assortment of activities that she learnt from diverse sources including colleagues, seniors and books on the subject. Different educationists have used different terms for formative assessment as Angelo & Cross used the term CATs (classroom assessment techniques) for the same subject. Keeley introduces the concept and points out three purposes of assessment: Diagnostic, Formative and Summative. However, diagnostic assessment becomes formative if the data is used “to inform instruction”. Therefore, she emphasizes on a shift from summative focused instruction to Formative Assessment Centered Classroom and suggests ways as to how it can be done effectively. Formative assessment cannot produce significant data unless there is effective teaching. Thus a teachers choosing formative assessment-centered class must be able to integrate assessment into his instruction. This is what Keeley has discussed in chapter two of the book as to how FACTs are integrated into teaching. This is a crucial point as one may not select FACTs randomly but has to make efforts in selecting the FACT that matches with the instructional design and purpose. She reinforces this idea by using SAIL (Science Assessment, Instruction and Learning). This SAIL is cyclic in nature and facilitates science teachers in selecting the right instructional design that serves the purpose. The concept of SAIL has been explained in greater length for better understanding of the concept. In chapter 3, the author has given few considerations before implementing FACT. She rightly points out for those new to Formative Assessment to treat it as “ Dipping your toe into the water” and review the results before moving to some more strategies. Once the beginning leads to results, the next significant aspect would not be to implementation but sustainability. There must be a balance in the implementation of FACTs in such a way that it leads to a productive feedback for the students in terms of learning.
Chapter FOUR is the lengthiest and most significant chapter of the book as it contains 75 practical strategies of Formative Assessment with a step-by-step implementation guide in which the author has started off with a description of how each technique promotes student learning followed by its design and implementation considerations such as required materials, timing, modeling the technique, and grouping students. The implementation steps culminates with modifications for various instructional needs, cautions on using each technique, and the ways the techniques can be used in other content areas. The author has filled each technique with some data to clarify how the technique would serve the purpose. This unique feature of the book that it explains FACTs with examples and provides ways for implementing them on other content areas sets this book apart from all available resources dealing with formative assessment. This feature also to some extent quashes the criticism that the book has a narrow scope with reference to the academic subject and level, which is science and high school respectively. Also, it is worth remembering that in many educational contexts formative assessment at the tertiary education is a mere cosmetic reform or in very nascent phase and to these teachers such a book will still be very much relevant.
Mohammad Abdul Wahid Usmani. (2012) Science Formative Assessment:75 Practical Strategies for Linking Assessment, Instruction, and Learning, Journal of Social Sciences & Interdisciplinary Research, Volume 1, Issue 2.
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