do diagnostic assessment to work out what kinds of learning experiences and
what kinds of curriculum appropriate to a learner, given their learning level.
Now, formative assessment is assessment that happens during the learning process.
In other words, it's progress assessment,
it's assessment which often might be designed to give specific feedback
to learners that helps them in their learning.
And then at the end of a chunk of learning, at the end of a week or
a term or year or a whatever, we often have summative assessment which
is sort of a retrospective evaluation of what the students have learned.
And in fact of all these three types of assessment or these three times of
assessment, the one that dominates by far over the others is summative assessment.
And in fact what people complain about and
what people argue about is that we've become just completely obsessed and
overwhelmed by the amount of summative assessments going on in order to judge
school systems, in order to judge teachers.
It's a very managerialist, judgemental type of system.
And one of the critiques of this system is to what extent do these summative
assessments dominate the teaching in a way which is often not hugely helpful, because
the summative assessments don't give you feedback which helps your learning.
At the end of the semester, you get a certain grade or a certain rating, and
what does it tell you?
You'd better become a better person if you didn't knew very well or it congratulates
you if you did very well but it doesn't give you any specific information or
advice which will in a concrete way assist your learning.
It has this kind of bureaucratic managerialist function, and
one of the worries in education is that we've become dominated in recent
years by bureaucratic managerialism as reflected in tests.