Assessment, Feedback and Evaluation of Learning
Assessment questions ask you to distinguish purposes. Diagnostic assessment establishes starting points; formative assessment generates evidence during learning to adapt teaching; summative assessment judges achievement against standards at an end point. Formative is not simply frequent testing - it only counts if the evidence changes what teacher or learner does next.
Technical vocabulary
Validity means the assessment measures what it claims, for the intended inference. Reliability means consistency across markers and occasions. A rubric can improve reliability while threatening validity if it rewards surface features. Criterion-referenced assessment compares performance with a standard; norm-referenced compares students with each other; ipsative compares a learner with their own prior performance. Backwash describes assessment's effect on teaching and learning.
Feedback
Hattie and Timperley frame effective feedback as answering three questions - where am I going (feed up), how am I going (feed back), where to next (feed forward) - and locate it at task, process or self-regulation level rather than at the level of self. Praise ('great work') is not feedback. Too much written correction reduces uptake.
Traps
Calling any quiz formative; treating a mark as feedback; confusing validity with reliability; assuming rubrics guarantee objectivity; using data to rank rather than to plan.
Rule of thumb
Before marking, decide the two things you most want learners to change. Give one model, one specific success, and one actionable next step - then timetable five minutes of lesson time to act on it, or the feedback is decorative.