Challenging the Testing Concept: Formative versus Summative Testing

Consuela Popa, Romania

Consuela Popa is an English teacher. In the past she used to teach English and French. She has taught in state schools, high schools and secondary schools, at all levels, all profiles, from bilingual/special languages intensive classes to technological/specialty, or elementary (primary), and even for one year as an English teacher for a private school/kindergarten.
She has written English methodology articles (HLT, national magazines)and she is interested in writing in English and in the study of languages as well: French, Spanish. She is currrently working on English literature reflections/analyzis books and terminology, bilingual, English-Romanian, English-French glossaries. Socio-linguistics, psychology, pedagogy and Christian theology are other fields of interest. As a linguist, she is not only interested in academic study and writing, but also in learning and communicating in other foreign languages and in historical and comparative linguistics. As artists, linguists should be aware of the fact that interdisciplinary aspects are unavoidable and that we should touch a variety of fields through our writing.
E-mail: konskris2001@yahoo.com

This article is not meant to be a rigid description or “sudden death” sentence upon the nature and signification of the notions listed in the title, but it is meant to challenge reflection and debate. It is meant to raise awareness of these concepts` multiple valences or interpretations as well as awareness of their importance as notions taken altogether, with their complexities and contradictory or similar aspects. Only when thinking deeply about testing and evaluation, I think many us would make full circles over and over again, shapes and structures of assumptions and intricate links. And only when listing them in a superficial, scholastic manner, we could again fall prey to confusion and misunderstanding or even underevaluating of these notions and we could jump back, by the very means of just “defining” them on a surface, to a “didacticist”, narrow-minded or aged way of comprehension.

If we are to speak about assessment and testing, I think that one could never be satisfied with just listing some theoretical or even practical, but sample like points and aspects, for the subject above could be covered in countless pages. When thinking about this issue, I had in mind some successive parts as a way of structuring it and the difficulty and complexity of this debate is really a challenge for me to conceive it and further it as a many-sequences subject or issue and even as a major article/research. I shall be happy if it gets interesting to others as well and open for debate and why not, polemics (hopefully fruitful and not dry!).

Firstly, I was struck by the modernist emphasis upon what is called formative assessment or testing and this opened a whole new, meaningful world for me. Of course, schools and in general universities or any educational institutions formally and /or officially recognize or “separate” the importance of the two notions, others try to implement research and experiment in order to fully potentialize their instruction programmes/schedules. Or they try to see them from different angles, either because the testing practice can be different from one country or region to another, in some cases, either because teachers and researchers in this field find some intrinsically linked features, or common positive traits related to these notions. Anyway, the simplest answer would be, when asked what is formative and summative testing, something like : “We should make a difference between summative and formative testing.” We could, in this way, define formative testing as continuous assessment, evaluation or testing within the instructional frame, all throughout or during a certain period of instruction or learning, for better learning or as the learning process is going on. Being an ongoing or continuous means of assessing or evaluating students; formative assessment or testing is intended to improve the learning process, as the learning is taking place, while not attempting to give final conclusions or sentences/judgements over the results and efficiency of this learning process /instruction. Of course, not only does formative testing help improve the learning and teaching processes on their way, but it is an important tool of gathering information for teachers, during certain stages of instruction, in connection with the “diagnosis” of their students` situation, level, progress, opportunities for further placement in language learning programmes or classes, improvement programmes and research, etc

Summative assessment is, on the other hand in this respect, the means to round things up and to assess in a formal or official way , the efficiency of the work that has been done, through scoring/grading, through an agreed special system of evaluation/conceiving of the exam or test. Summative testing can be done by challenging large groups of students with previously agreed norms of testing, for classification of for a way of producing marks and grades that can be used for further entrance into colleges, universities, for getting language certificates worldwide known and useful in order to get a job or promote in our careers or for statistics of any kind. Some of such statistics can be used in order to improve the educational policies on a national/local/district level. But question is, can such overall statistics reflect the reality faithfully? Does it not risk of not showing up with accuracy what may happen on an individual level , micro-level at which we are working, with certain classes/groups or pupils? I say this, because the danger of analyzing things through “global” labeling may not prove to be efficient in terms of information gathering and self-improvement, because in class we should work with individualities, and dwell on the individual, not with large groups in a chaotic or formalistic manner. We do group or place our students in classes according to their level, abilities, personalities, but each of them is unique!

Consecrating a certain content, space, time, criteria to summative assessment or testing should mean that we also want to have a “final” , or rather end of period, challenge, this time taken in a more serious manner, in order to see how “mature” the learning and previous instruction and formative stages have been . Summative testing, as its name indicates, rounds things off at the end of a certain period and should officially be used in the form of public exams, or for instance, end of year exams, in order to produce results for national/local spreading, for reports within a specific institutional frame, etc.

But if I am to think about summative assessment, I would not just include here end of year exams or public exams, or proficiency language certificates of all kinds, for summative could as well include end of semester or unit, chapter, period, quantitatively and qualitatively conceived as to “sum up” what has been learned and achieved. Some people have turned this issue into what we might call a “controversy”, for in the past, these notions were probably too tightly separated in terms of defining or explaining them scientifically. The “summing up”, in this case, should be understood as official or formal when it also finalizes with grades/scores that are later on taken into consideration (the so called practice of “partial exams” or paperwork that were conceived in order to be added within the bigger exam’s frame and final grade and were considered to be a preliminary means of getting into the core exam or testing). I remember this was also a practice during my university years. (A lot of individual work , with a strong formative value, graded or not graded, as well as “preliminary or progressive testing” that was then scored up and added up to the final one at the end of the semester/year). This is maybe a matter of national differentiation, for our colleagues from all around the world can come up with so many different examples of exam practice, some of them similar, some of them quite different. Of course, summative testing means that grading can be a complex way of motivating or de-motivating students, since results can be satisfactory and can lead some of them to full engagement in their study, whereas the low-achievers might end up with a sense of low-esteem or even abandoning. Not to mention that even highly competent and creative students can resent and reject this means of assessing because it tightens up their universe through rigid frames instead of revealing their talents.

If we are to speak about formative assessment from a humanistic point of view, which I happen to share with much enthusiasm, well, I think that learning and testing should bind together in a ‘father-child’ relationship within the institutional frame or within the class, to some extent that “testing” (moreover understood as “practice exercise, or practice all skills and learning, and checking them in a gentle manner to see if we can go further and further within our journey), should make the best of whatever our students are. “Testing” should not tend to gather negative values, but rather be motivating, challenging, stirring students` ambition and a desire of “winning the game or competition” in an unthreatening atmosphere, debating the issues positively, but above all doing the tasks passionately and without fear of the “graded results”. Some time ago in history, there had been school environments with strong and maybe well intentioned, feelings, towards testing, in the sense that they almost saw testing or certain tests as something which should be avoided, and emphasis should be put on instruction alone. (Well, here we could go into deeper philosophy, because some form of “testing’ or ; checking the students abilities might have obligatorily exist even in that case, for feed-back is a natural stage of the teaching and learning process and “checking” occurs almost automatically, being as well a normal stage in itself ). What I want to stress is that in formative assessment, however, feed-back must play an important part but in its real sense, that of a positive, constructive way, genuine and versatile, improving or “correcting” things while not losing its “humane” or humanistic side, as an obviously required value!

Nowadays also, without discrimination, in some of the more “prophane” or inexperienced state schools, not only in elitist ones, formative testing should lead the way towards summative testing, when we shall probably want to put our students into more public or known situations where they should expose their knowledge and enjoy the contest spirit, bring “trophies” to our school institution and regard these summative exams as forms of gathering experience and of exposing what they do know, not what they do not know or what they had failed to achieve. We should teach them to regard summative exams as a way of exposing skillfully and creatively their knowledge and abilities. And we should use summative exams as teachers, in order to do all the gathering of information needed and research out of them, so that we should really have a gain, in terms of long-term fruitful reflection that leads to research and innovation, conclusions or observations, in terms of the very goal of our future continuous teacher-student development. So here we have come to admit and demonstrate that even “summative evaluation/testing” can play a formative role for us as teachers and for our students, of course on a clearly understood longer term than the other type of assessment. This was why when trying to think deeply, one should end up by not looking up on a parallel level at the two notions, but rather by seeing them as two sides of the same coin. (The complex “coin” with a multi-sized name, teaching-learning-assessment/evaluation/testing-continuous development/improvement) (for both students and teachers/trainers). (a vicious circle as well!)

One very important aspect about the danger of testing and namely summative testing is that we should avoid the syndrome of teaching for tests, that is, as it is well known in methodology, end up with a washback or backwash negative effect within our teaching manner, like training our pupils only how to pass the tests, or maximizing our time spent with “tricks for passing the exam”, at the expense of the real values of unhindered formative and productive, creative learning and at the expense of general language improvement and real fluency abilities. This kind of “washback effect” would, in other words, transform our teaching into a dry way of technically approaching something that actually requires not the “machine –like” acquisition of some skills and tricks of exam management. The “teaching for the test” syndrome or the washback(negative) effect arise out of the fear of not ending up with complete failure in our tests/exams/school reports of various types. But not such behaviorist trend with the “praise-blame” over –enforced, negative accessory should subjugate our minds and spirits as teachers and educators, but a different angle from which both teachers and students should think of summative assessment in order to see it as a way of gathering experience and wisdom. Maybe school institutions, in which failing in such final exams becomes a worrying/worrisome perspective, should really think of proposing to change to their higher forums or of changing the structure of these exams themselves if they can do that straight away. They can think of at least reshaping them as well as their curricula and syllabus; or they should at least help pupils see them and approach them in a different light, by re-thinking their strategies used while teaching and by really opening themselves to the aspect of research in the field of student-centered learning. This would normally also lead onto a judgment and adjustment of these tests` form and content, with implication towards their whole teaching programme, fact which is not so welcome by many schools! Reluctancy to such complex process can be easily understood, even if certainly not approved by us, since change is so often seen as a danger by many or they simply do not want to accept that it is the assessors, and the system that need to make adjustments, and not our “products”, the students!

But there is another key component that should be mentioned here, which will probably be a cliffhanger for a continuation of my “testing” designed series, due to its numerous implications: learner autonomy, which, besides motivation, should arise out of an instructional-assessment programme as an indispensable tool. Enforcing or emphasizing learner autonomy as a practice and concept is of extreme importance and directly linked to the whole issue of formative process and testing. It is so important that testing and especially summative testing, should be paid special attention in order to help us come to know, educate and shape personalities, not put our students into some dry frames of externally imposed forms of evaluation/examination.

We must create opportunities for them to “catch”, not try to “catch” them with these practices, we should expand their universe and not extinct their spirit! A challenge for us all teachers and test designers to take a deeper look at everything and start reasoning, to the benefit of everyone involved!

References

Garrison, C.,& Ehringhaus, M (2007). Formative and summative assessments in the classroom

Harmer, Jeremy, The Practice of English Language Teaching, Pearson Longman, fourth edition.

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