Summative Assessment In Research

2.2.1. Definition of ‘assessment’

There has been much work on defining what assessment is. Many researchers such as Black and William, Bachman, Huhta or Berry have proposed the definitions of assessment.

Black and William (1998) hold the view that “teachers should see assessment as a tool to promote greater student achievement in the classroom context” (page 49). In this sense, assessment is a part of the teaching and learning process and is taken to support learning. Similarly, Bachman (2004) defined assessment as “a process of collecting information about something that we are interested in, according to procedures that are systematic and substantially grounded” (pp. 6-7). In the same way, Huhta referred to assessment as “all kinds of procedures

Two functions are commonly identified in the literature: formative and summative assessment. Summative assessment, as its name suggests, summarizes what the students learnt during a course and it is usually done at the end of the semester (Brown, 2004). Besides, Alderson (2005) associated summative assessment with long traditional tests which were so stressful to students. Any kinds of test which lacks further feedback and the only possible use of it is gathering scores in the eyes of students can be summative even if teachers have primarily designed the test to facilitate learning and

In a general term, they emphasized the process in which information is collected during learning. From that, teachers can take some actions to help improve teaching and learning. However, there are also differences among these definitions. For example, unlike other researchers, Black also mentions the relationship between teachers and students. In his viewpoint, formative assessment can relate to the close relationship between the teachers and their students. To have a clear distinction between summative and formative assessment, below is the table of comparison of formative and summative assessment.

(Table 2.1) Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjmM1iN-m-E Formative assessment Summative assessment

Purpose To improve instruction and provide student feedback To measure student competency

When administered Ongoing throughout unit End of unit or course

How students use results To self-monitor understanding To gauge their progress toward course or grade-level goals and benchmarks.

How teachers use results To check for understanding For grades, promotion.

Table 2.1: Comparison of formative and summative assessment

In this study, formative assessment can be simply defined as a process in which its main purpose is to contribute to student learning by the provision of information collected during students’