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Philosophy of Assessment: Formative Understanding and Summative Application

Michael Robles

Graduate Department, Vanguard University

EDUG-526: Instructional Design and Subject-Specific Pedagogy

Dr. Sylvia Kane

October 2, 2022
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Abstract

In this essay, I will be reviewing the major forms of assessment and how they are

important to student learning and educators’ self-reflection. I will also explain my personal

philosophy of assessment and how I resonate with particular forms of assessment over others in

terms of how beneficial they are for student understanding and teaching. My philosophy of

assessment focuses on formative assessments being utilized to reflect on students’ understanding

of the content, whereas summative assessments should be more focused on how students apply

their knowledge of the content to specific areas.

Assessments are a vital tool in students’ education in both a teaching and learning

perspective. Assessments are important in tracking student progress throughout their education in

a particular subject, and determining how effective the educator’s lessons and teaching

performance have been to their students. While not every student may be skillful in every type of

assessment, teachers must utilize different forms of assessment to their standards while aligning

them with student needs. After learning about the different assessment types and the various

purposes behind each one, I have developed a philosophy of assessment where I feel a student’s

individual performance should be focused on understanding, and summative assessments should

be focused more on how well they can apply the content.

Assessments can be organized in two types: formative and summative. According to Paul

R. Burden and David M. Bird in their book Methods for Effective Teaching, “Formative

assessment occurs during instruction and is a way to assess students’ progress,” (Burden Bird

286). Formative assessment is helpful for teachers as well, determining whether the instruction

methods and content they are teaching is actually helping the students learn the material.

However, there are many factors that go into determining so. The type of assessment must match

what the educator is attempting to convey; if they give a poorly designed assessment to assess

their students’ progress, then it can most likely prove unusable results. Formative assessment is

important in allowing students to reflect on their learning of the content at hand, and should

show them what they must work on and how they should move forward in the class. If students

cannot do so from the assessment given, then the assessment has proven to be unusable. Burden

and Bird state assessments should be valid in related to the content, reliable in determining

results, and practical in assignment (288-289). Validity and reliability are crucial to formative

assessments because students should not feel as though the assessment will “make or break” their
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grade. If designed well, formative assessments should give insight to how the various students

learn, and give the educator a chance to reflect on the framework of the material to appeal to

their needs. While these formative assessments establish balance in focus on both the student and

teacher, summative assessments focus more on what students have learned.

Summative assessments determine what the students know in a more finalized form.

Burden and Bird define summative assessments as occurring after instruction and document what

students know, understand, and can do. This final assessment form allows students to prove what

they have learned and how well they understand the content to a certain endpoint. Since

summative assessments have a higher deciding factor on students’ grades, they are seen as more

crucial. In fact, Burden and Bird inform educators to grade summative assessments separately

from formative ones and not to grade them with the same weight because of the importance

summative assessments hold (316). Since students are still learning throughout formative

assessments, they should not be as influential to their grades. I agree, as formative assessments

have a variety of purposes and factors that amount to them, but summative assessments are much

more straightforward. This has helped shape my philosophy on assessments for my future career

as an educator as well.

My philosophy of assessment stands as this: students should be formatively assessed on

content understanding, and eventually be assessed on a summative level based on their

application of the content to particular areas (depending on the subject). I believe focusing on

formative assessment throughout a unit rather than final summative assessments at the end of

each section is more helpful. When students know they are being graded on a final assessment or

test, they grow anxious and usually “cram” the content beforehand in order to do their best. This

Product-based assessment can offer more insight in how well students can apply understanding
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of the content to various concepts and topics. In the English subject, application is most essential,

especially when seeing how students apply their content knowledge on an individual level. When

students collaborate and discuss the material of the unit together, they can gain different insights

from their peers to apply on future formative assessments.

The only summative assessments I would utilize would be criterion-based evaluation, and

would most likely be papers, portfolios, or media products. These product-based assessments

require students to apply their own individual understanding gained from the collaborative work

they performed over the course of the unit. Formative assessments should also be more

collaborative and performance-based (with some exceptions) in order for me to determine a

student’s understanding of the content, while also analyzing their learning on an individual level.

One way I would do this is by assigning students certain aspects of a group project that assess

their understanding of the content. For example, I can assign students oral presentations on a

book they read for the unit, and assign one student to focus on character development, one on

theme, and one on influence in modern literature. Or, they would be allowed to decide amongst

themselves while also preparing their own section of the presentation. By doing so, I would be

able to assess them on an individual basis of how they are learning the content (how to analyze

literature, determining character development, etc.) while they also collaborate and learn from

one another.

I believe individual understanding is important for formative assessments, whereas

application of content is important for summative assessments. Each assessment type should be

utilized by educators in some way, but they should be used in ways that help the students reflect

on their own understanding as well. An effective assessment will encourage the learner to apply

themselves more to the content at hand. Educators as well as all involved in designing student
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assessments should focus on utilizing assessments in helping students learn, not using them

solely for student success. Student success is achieved through application of what they learned

and being able to use the material for a variety of purposes. If we focus solely on what students

should know without finding ways to see how they learned, then our assessments are not being

used effectively.
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References

Burden, P. R., & Byrd, D. M. (2016). Methods for effective teaching: Meeting the needs of all

students (7th ed.). Pearson.