Classroom Assessment: The Psychological and Theoretical Foundations of the Formative Assessment

Abstract

The change of the learning and teaching definitions in psychology has also changed the nature of classroom assessment implementations. One of these important changes is that the targeted skills in the classroom assessment, and item structures utilized to measure these skills have changed. Teachers have started to use items and tasks that can represent the significant knowledge and skills of subject better and provide rich information and evidence for students’ development rather than utilizing items measuring only remembering the bits of knowledge or simple comprehension. The second important change has taken place in terms of why and how teachers and students use classroom assessment. Although there are a few studies on the change of targeted skills and item structures used in the classroom assessment in the related national literature, the number of studies providing information on how to apply classroom assessment in line with its recent definitions, aims and implementation is still limited. Thus, the current study aims at providing guiding information on why and how to implement classroom assessment to develop students’ learning, motivation, and self-assessment skills.