This article is a review of the literature on classroom formative assessment. Several studies show firm evidence that innovations designed to strengthen the frequent feedback that students receive about their learning yield substantial learning gains. The perceptions of students and their role in self‐assessment are considered alongside analysis of the strategies used by teachers and the formative strategies incorporated in such systemic approaches as mastery learning. There follows a more detailed and theoretical analysis of the nature of feedback, which provides a basis for a discussion of the development of theoretical models for formative assessment and of the prospects for the improvement of practice.

Assessment and Classroom Learning

Mastery learning is a philosophically based approach to the design of classroom environments that is currently creating controversy in the educational research and development community. Critics of mastery learning assert that mastery approaches to instruction are rigid, mechanistic, training strategies (Groff, 1974; Jaynes, 1975); that they can only give students the simple skills required to survive in a closed society (Cronbach, 1972); and that they do not appreciate the complexities of school learning (L. S. Bowen, 1975). Adherents of mastery approaches to instruction maintain that they are flexible, humanistic, educational strategies (Levin, 1974; Scriven, 1975); that they can provide students with the complex skills needed to prosper in an increasingly open society (H. M. Levin, 1975); and that they do take into account the realities of classroom life (Block & Anderson, 1975). In this chapter we propose to introduce the basic ideas and practices that have generated this controversy, as well as to review the associated research. We begin the chapter with a broad overview of mastery learning philosophy, theory, and practice. We then take a relatively microscopic view of four types or classes of research generated by these ideas and practices. In the final section we take a more macroscopic view of this research and ask what our findings may mean in practical, theoretical, and ideological terms.

1: Mastery Learning:

With a new approach and fortified by a wealth of experimental findings this book reverberates the hereditary-environment discussions of earlier decades. Little, if any, new data were obtained specifically for this research. Instead the author utilized available results from numerous longitudinal studies in a variety of disciplines. Testing the Overlap Hypothesis on these studies is the primary contribution of the book. The Overlap Hypothesis used here was formulated by J. E. Anderson who suggested that correlations between scores at two temporal points in longitudinal studies approximate the square root of the ratio obtained by dividing the mean of the first set of scores by the mean of the second. Hypothetical assumptions underlying this formulation are too involved to be included in a review; thus, it may suffice to say that this formula provides a method for comparing actual correlations with those expected on the basis of

Stability and Change in Human Characteristics.

EXECUTIVE EDITORS Tom Bramley, Cambridge Assessment, UK Jannette Elwood, Queen’s University Belfast, UK Harvey Goldstein, University of Bristol, UK Anthony Green, University of Bedfordshire, UK Sandra Johnson, University of Bristol, UK Joshua McGrane, Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment, UK Pauline Rea-Dickins, Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment, UK Gordon Stobart, UCL Institute of Education, UK Sally Thomas, University of Bristol, UK Guoxing Yu, University of Bristol, UK

Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice

In this essay I explore the relationship between research reviews and the fields of study to which they pertain. Using the curriculum field as an example, I argue that such reviews are venues where fields of inquiry are constituted, reproduced, and over time changed. This construction occurs, I suggest, as the discursive practices or rules of reasoning embedded in the language in which these reviews are framed are transformed into curriculum policies or programs through a process that I liken to state building. Both these discursive practices and the policies which they allow constitute the regulative mechanisms of the curriculum. I use the issues of the Review of Educational Research devoted to curriculum from 1931 through 1969 to explore this topic. Undertaking a genealogical examination, I explore the lineage of these discursive practices, paying particular attention to their patterns of discontinuity over time. I use this genealogy to suggest how the curriculum field was constructed and to identify its regulative impact. In doing so, I look at how curriculum discourse works as an instrument of power. I conclude the essay by considering what this exploration tells us in general about the relationship between reviews and fields of inquiry.

Discourse, rationality, and educational research : A historical perspective of RER

Changes are occurring both in theories for constructing curriculum and in what is actually taught in the schools. Knowledge of the powerful forces influencing these changes is limited. An indication of the diverse approaches used deriving such knowledge and the results attained from these efforts will be found in this chapter. Most of the studies cited are valuable for their curricular implications and because the findings reported are of general interest.

John D. McNeil

Papers

2: Forces Influencing Curriculum