The Young Researcher (Aug 2018)
Student perceptions of the implementation of formative assessment: A Royal St. George’s College case study
Abstract
Formative assessment has been widely implemented for its well-researched positive benefits. Despite this, an absence of research exists when it comes to student evaluations of its implementation. To address this for my school, Royal St. George’s College or RSGC, I asked students questions about formative assessment according to the Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick (2007) model in both a survey and an interview. The results revealed that formative assessment allows students to learn about what good performance is, self-assess their own work, and focus on improving, not on their grades. That said, students could learn more if teachers were to make formative assessment more rigorous as well as, providing more feedback. Unfortunately, feedback is often formulaic, and when it is given students are not applying all suggestions or approaching teachers as much as they should. In addition, the results of this study reported that teachers should use feedback more frequently to learn about their students.
