Embedded Formative Assessment

Citation

Wiliam, D. (2017). Embedded Formative Assessment (2nd ed.). Solution Tree Press.

Chapter Summary

The second edition (published in October 2017, about 240 pages) keeps the seven-chapter plan of the 2011 first edition: two chapters that make the argument, then one chapter for each of the five key strategies of formative assessment. The publisher states that over 30 percent of the content is new, including new research, techniques, examples and templates, fresh material on the state of education and employment, and a deeper discussion of educational neuroscience, including memory studies and dual-pathway theory. Each strategy chapter summarises the research evidence for the strategy and then offers practical techniques that teachers have used; the author designed the strategy chapters to be as self-contained as possible.

Chapter 1: Why Educational Achievement Matters

The case for raising achievement as a national priority. Higher achievement benefits individuals (health, longevity, earnings) and society (lower criminal-justice and health-care costs, economic growth). The chapter argues that reforms to school structure, governance, curriculum and technology have largely failed, because the quality of teachers matters most, varies widely and matters more for some students than for others. Since recruiting better entrants or removing weaker teachers would take a generation to pay off, the conclusion is that serving teachers must be helped to improve. The publisher's listing gives this chapter as "Discovering Why Educational Achievement Matters".

Chapter 2: The Case for Formative Assessment

The chapter that the publisher offers as a free sample. It first weighs popular foci for teacher professional development. It finds that teacher experience adds only modestly to student progress, that there is no evidence for matching instruction to learning styles (it cites the review by Pashler and colleagues and the research on "desirable difficulties"), that neuromyths are widespread and that cognitive psychology, not neuroscience, does the useful work, and that experimental attempts to raise student achievement by increasing teachers' subject knowledge have largely failed. It then traces the origins of formative assessment from Scriven's "formative evaluation" (1967) and Bloom's application of it to classroom tests (1969), defines what formative assessment is and is not, introduces the five strategies, and presents assessment as the bridge between teaching and learning.

Chapter 3: Clarifying, Sharing, and Understanding Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

The first strategy: making sure students know what they are meant to learn and what success looks like, with the research on why this matters and techniques for doing it.

Chapter 4: Eliciting Evidence of Learners' Achievement

The second strategy, framed in the introduction as engineering classroom discussions, activities and tasks that reveal what students are thinking. The publisher highlights classroom questioning as a central theme.

Chapter 5: Providing Feedback That Moves Learning Forward

The third strategy: feedback designed to move learning forward. The publisher lists meaningful feedback among the areas with updated examples and templates.

Chapter 6: Activating Students as Instructional Resources for One Another

The fourth strategy: collaborative and cooperative learning, in which peers support one another's learning.

Chapter 7: Activating Students as Owners of Their Own Learning

The fifth strategy: self-assessment and self-regulated learning, so that students take responsibility for their progress.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–2: the argument

• Teacher quality: the single most important factor in the education system, in the author's account, and highly variable between teachers.
• Improving serving teachers: the conclusion that progress depends on helping current teachers get better rather than on selection.
• Formative assessment: assessment used to adjust teaching and learning while they are under way, as distinct from summative judgement; the chapter traces the idea to Scriven and Bloom.
• Assessment as the bridge between teaching and learning: the idea that closes Chapter 2, that assessment is what connects what is taught with what is learned.

Chapters 3–7: the five key strategies

• Learning intentions and success criteria: shared statements of what is to be learned and how success will be recognised.
• Eliciting evidence: questions, discussions and tasks designed to show what students understand.
• Feedback that moves learning forward: information that tells students what to do next.
• Peer and self-assessment: students acting as resources for one another and as owners of their own learning.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear framework. The five strategies organise many individual classroom techniques into one model; the author's introduction to the first edition says that most techniques are not new and that the framework showing how they fit together is the book's contribution. The publisher and an endorsement by Heidi Andrade count more than seventy techniques in this edition.
• Evidence presented alongside practice. The free Chapter 2 shows the method: claims are tied to named studies and reviews, and popular ideas (learning styles, brain-based education, subject-knowledge courses) are tested against the evidence before formative assessment is proposed. Lorrie Shepard's endorsement on the publisher's page praises the book's use of theory and evidence to explain why the strategies work.
• Written by a practitioner-researcher. Wiliam taught mathematics and science in London schools before co-authoring, with Paul Black, the 1998 review of research on formative assessment; his writing moves between classroom detail and research summary.
• Modular strategy chapters. Because each strategy chapter is self-contained, a teacher or a study group can work on one strategy at a time.

Limitations

• Argued from a single direction. The opening chapters are an argument for formative assessment as the best investment in teacher development, and the comparison with other approaches is made by the author himself. Readers should treat it as a case being made, and check it against broader texts.
• School-focused and policy-framed for the United States. The examples come from school classrooms, and Chapter 2 discusses American state requirements for professional development; university teachers will need to adapt the techniques.
• Not a measurement textbook. The book concentrates on minute-by-minute and day-to-day formative practice; reliability and validity, test construction and the interpretation of standardized scores are left to other books in the course.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the assessment list, this is the focused book on formative practice. W. James Popham's Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need to Know and Susan Brookhart and Anthony Nitko's Educational Assessment of Students are general textbooks that cover reliability, validity, test construction, standardized tests and grading; each gives formative assessment one part of its coverage. Read one of them for the foundations and use Wiliam to turn the formative chapters into classroom routines.

The Handbook of Formative Assessment in the Disciplines, edited by Heidi Andrade, Randy Bennett and Gregory Cizek, is the research-level continuation: it asks how formative assessment works inside particular subjects such as mathematics, science and language arts. R. Michael Furr's Psychometrics: An Introduction concerns the measurement theory behind tests and has little overlap with this book.

How to Use This Book

The book is written for practising teachers and school leaders and assumes no background in assessment theory; student teachers will get most from it alongside a placement. It also works well for a professional learning group.

A practical reading plan:

• Core: Chapter 2 in full, since it defines formative assessment and sets out the five strategies that organise everything else. Chapter 1 can be read quickly by those who do not need the policy argument.
• Strategies: read Chapters 3–7 in order the first time, then return to one chapter at a time. Choose two or three techniques from a chapter, use them for several weeks, and note what changes in students' responses before adding more.
• Alongside: keep a short log of evidence gathered in lessons and what was done with it, the habit the book is trying to build.

Readers who want the research base can follow the references the chapters cite, starting with the review by Black and Wiliam. Solution Tree also publishes a separate Handbook for Embedded Formative Assessment, listed as a related product on the publisher's page.