The Effect of Formative Assessment on Achievement and Motivation

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2020-05-05

Department

Program

Masters of Education

Citation of Original Publication

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Abstract

Formative assessments are teaching strategies used to gauge student understanding and make in class adjustments to improve a lesson. Formative assessments can also improve student achievement and motivation. While there is enough evidence that formative assessment significantly improves these student measures, there is insufficient evidence on specific formative assessment tools and strategies that are commonly used in the classroom by teachers. This study seeks to better understand the effect of a specific formative assessment strategy, Progress Trackers, by comparing a control group that did not receive the Progress Tracker with a treatment group that did receive the formative assessment. The study showed that there was no significant difference between the treatment and control group based on the means of a pretest and posttest score. While not statistically significant, the treatment group did show a larger increase of students with at least a 60% improvement in achievement. The lack of statistical significance between the control and treatment group could be caused by the ineffectiveness of the formative assessment or the inability to exclude other variables in the classroom setting. This could include the use of other formative assessments used in both groups, content delivery and implementation of the formative assessment. Adjustments to the Progress Tracker itself, implementation and use with other demographics would be needed to accurately determine the effectiveness or lack thereof of the Progress Tracker.