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October 1998: Black
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Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom
Assessment
By Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam
Firm evidence shows that formative assessment is an essential component of classroom work and that
its development can raise standards of achievement, Mr. Black and Mr. Wiliam point out. Indeed,
they know of no other way of raising standards for which such a strong prima facie case can be made.
Illustration © 1998 by A. J. Garces
RAISING the standards of learning that are achieved through schooling is an important national
priority. In recent years, governments throughout the world have been more and more vigorous in
making changes in pursuit of this aim. National, state, and district standards; target setting; enhanced
programs for the external testing of students' performance; surveys such as NAEP (National Assessment
of Educational Progress) and TIMSS (Third International Mathematics and Science Study); initiatives to
improve school planning and management; and more frequent and thorough inspection are all means
toward the same end. But the sum of all these reforms has not added up to an effective policy because
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something is missing.
Learning is driven by what teachers and pupils do in classrooms. Teachers have to manage complicated
and demanding situations, channeling the personal, emotional, and social pressures of a group of 30 or
more youngsters in order to help them learn immediately and become better learners in the future.
Standards can be raised only if teachers can tackle this task more effectively. What is missing from the
efforts alluded to above is any direct help with this task. This fact was recognized in the TIMSS video
study: "A focus on standards and accountability that ignores the processes of teaching and learning in
classrooms will not provide the direction that teachers need in their quest to improve."1
In terms of systems engineering, present policies in the U.S. and in many other countries seem to treat
the classroom as a black box. Certain inputs from the outside -- pupils, teachers, other resources,
management rules and requirements, parental anxieties, standards, tests with high stakes, and so on -- are
fed into the box. Some outputs are supposed to follow: pupils who are more knowledgeable and
competent, better test results, teachers who are reasonably satisfied, and so on. But what is happening
inside the box? How can anyone be sure that a particular set of new inputs will produce better outputs if
we don't at least study what happens inside? And why is it that most of the reform initiatives mentioned
in the first paragraph are not aimed at giving direct help and support to the work of teachers in
classrooms?
The answer usually given is that it is up to teachers: they have to make the inside work better. This
answer is not good enough, for two reasons. First, it is at least possible that some changes in the inputs
may be counterproductive and make it harder for teachers to raise standards. Second, it seems strange,
even unfair, to leave the most difficult piece of the standards-raising puzzle entirely to teachers. If there
are ways in which policy makers and others can give direct help and support to the everyday classroom
task of achieving better learning, then surely these ways ought to be pursued vigorously.
This article is about the inside of the black box. We focus on one aspect of teaching: formative
assessment. But we will show that this feature is at the heart of effective teaching.
The Argument
We start from the self-evident proposition that teaching and learning must be interactive. Teachers need
to know about their pupils' progress and difficulties with learning so that they can adapt their own work
to meet pupils' needs -- needs that are often unpredictable and that vary from one pupil to another.
Teachers can find out what they need to know in a variety of ways, including observation and discussion
in the classroom and the reading of pupils' written work.
We use the general term assessment to refer to all those activities undertaken by teachers -- and by their
students in assessing themselves -- that provide information to be used as feedback to modify teaching
and learning activities. Such assessment becomes formative assessment when the evidence is actually
used to adapt the teaching to meet student needs.2
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There is nothing new about any of this. All teachers make assessments in every class they teach. But
there are three important questions about this process that we seek to answer:
● Is there evidence that improving formative assessment raises standards?
● Is there evidence that there is room for improvement?
● Is there evidence about how to improve formative assessment?
In setting out to answer these questions, we have conducted an extensive survey of the research
literature. We have checked through many books and through the past nine years' worth of issues of
more than 160 journals, and we have studied earlier reviews of research. This process yielded about 580
articles or chapters to study. We prepared a lengthy review, using material from 250 of these sources,
that has been published in a special issue of the journal Assessment in Education, together with
comments on our work by leading educational experts from Australia, Switzerland, Hong Kong,
Lesotho, and the U.S.3
The conclusion we have reached from our research review is that the answer to each of the three
questions above is clearly yes. In the three main sections below, we outline the nature and force of the
evidence that justifies this conclusion. However, because we are presenting a summary here, our text
will appear strong on assertions and weak on the details of their justification. We maintain that these
assertions are backed by evidence and that this backing is set out in full detail in the lengthy review on
which this article is founded.
We believe that the three sections below establish a strong case that governments, their agencies, school
authorities, and the teaching profession should study very carefully whether they are seriously interested
in raising standards in education. However, we also acknowledge widespread evidence that
fundamental change in education can be achieved only slowly -- through programs of professional
development that build on existing good practice. Thus we do not conclude that formative assessment is
yet another "magic bullet" for education. The issues involved are too complex and too closely linked to
both the difficulties of classroom practice and the beliefs that drive public policy. In a final section, we
confront this complexity and try to sketch out a strategy for acting on our evidence.
Does Improving Formative Assessment Raise Standards?
A research review published in 1986, concentrating primarily on classroom assessment work for
children with mild handicaps, surveyed a large number of innovations, from which 23 were selected.4
Those chosen satisfied the condition that quantitative evidence of learning gains was obtained, both for
those involved in the innovation and for a similar group not so involved. Since then, many more papers
have been published describing similarly careful quantitative experiments. Our own review has selected
at least 20 more studies. (The number depends on how rigorous a set of selection criteria are applied.)
All these studies show that innovations that include strengthening the practice of formative assessment
produce significant and often substantial learning gains. These studies range over age groups from 5-
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year-olds to university undergraduates, across several school subjects, and over several countries.
For research purposes, learning gains of this type are measured by comparing the average improvements
in the test scores of pupils involved in an innovation with the range of scores that are found for typical
groups of pupils on these same tests. The ratio of the former divided by the latter is known as the effect
size. Typical effect sizes of the formative assessment experiments were between 0.4 and 0.7. These
effect sizes are larger than most of those found for educational interventions. The following examples
illustrate some practical consequences of such large gains.
● An effect size of 0.4 would mean that the average pupil involved in an innovation would record
the same achievement as a pupil in the top 35% of those not so involved.
● An effect size gain of 0.7 in the recent international comparative studies in mathematics5 would
have raised the score of a nation in the middle of the pack of 41 countries (e.g., the U.S.) to one
of the top five.
Many of these studies arrive at another important conclusion: that improved formative assessment helps
low achievers more than other students and so reduces the range of achievement while raising
achievement overall. A notable recent example is a study devoted entirely to low-achieving students and
students with learning disabilities, which shows that frequent assessment feedback helps both groups
enhance their learning.6 Any gains for such pupils could be particularly important. Furthermore, pupils
who come to see themselves as unable to learn usually cease to take school seriously. Many become
disruptive; others resort to truancy. Such young people are likely to be alienated from society and to
become the sources and the victims of serious social problems.
Thus it seems clear that very significant learning gains lie within our grasp. The fact that such gains have
been achieved by a variety of methods that have, as a common feature, enhanced formative assessment
suggests that this feature accounts, at least in part, for the successes. However, it does not follow that it
would be an easy matter to achieve such gains on a wide scale in normal classrooms. Many of the
reports we have studied raise a number of other issues.
● All such work involves new ways to enhance feedback between those taught and the teacher,
ways that will require significant changes in classroom practice.
● Underlying the various approaches are assumptions about what makes for effective learning -- in
particular the assumption that students have to be actively involved.
● For assessment to function formatively, the results have to be used to adjust teaching and
learning; thus a significant aspect of any program will be the ways in which teachers make these
adjustments.
● The ways in which assessment can affect the motivation and self-esteem of pupils and the
benefits of engaging pupils in self-assessment deserve careful attention.
Is There Room for Improvement?
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A poverty of practice. There is a wealth of research evidence that the everyday practice of assessment
in classrooms is beset with problems and shortcomings, as the following selected quotations indicate.
● "Marking is usually conscientious but often fails to offer guidance on how work can be
improved. In a significant minority of cases, marking reinforces underachievement and
underexpectation by being too generous or unfocused. Information about pupil performance
received by the teacher is insufficiently used to inform subsequent work," according to a United
Kingdom inspection report on secondary schools.7
● "Why is the extent and nature of formative assessment in science so impoverished?" asked a
research study on secondary science teachers in the United Kingdom.8
● "Indeed they pay lip service to [formative assessment] but consider that its practice is unrealistic
in the present educational context," reported a study of Canadian secondary teachers.9
● "The assessment practices outlined above are not common, even though these kinds of
approaches are now widely promoted in the professional literature," according to a review of
assessment practices in U.S. schools.10
The most important difficulties with assessment revolve around three issues. The first issue is effective
learning.
● The tests used by teachers encourage rote and superficial learning even when teachers say they
want to develop understanding; many teachers seem unaware of the inconsistency.
● The questions and other methods teachers use are not shared with other teachers in the same
school, and they are not critically reviewed in relation to what they actually assess.
● For primary teachers particularly, there is a tendency to emphasize quantity and presentation of
work and to neglect its quality in relation to learning.
The second issue is negative impact.
● The giving of marks and the grading function are overemphasized, while the giving of useful
advice and the learning function are underemphasized.
● Approaches are used in which pupils are compared with one another, the prime purpose of which
seems to them to be competition rather than personal improvement; in consequence, assessment
feedback teaches low-achieving pupils that they lack "ability," causing them to come to believe
that they are not able to learn.
The third issue is the managerial role of assessments.
● Teachers' feedback to pupils seems to serve social and managerial functions, often at the expense
of the learning function.
● Teachers are often able to predict pupils' results on external tests because their own tests imitate
them, but at the same time teachers know too little about their pupils' learning needs.
● The collection of marks to fill in records is given higher priority than the analysis of pupils' work
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to discern learning needs; furthermore, some teachers pay no attention to the assessment records
of their pupils' previous teachers.
Of course, not all these descriptions apply to all classrooms. Indeed, there are many schools and
classrooms to which they do not apply at all. Nevertheless, these general conclusions have been drawn
by researchers who have collected evidence -- through observation, interviews, and questionnaires --
from schools in several countries, including the U.S.
An empty commitment. The development of national assessment policy in England and Wales over the
last decade illustrates the obstacles that stand in the way of developing policy support for formative
assessment. The recommendations of a government task force in 198811 and all subsequent statements
of government policy have emphasized the importance of formative assessment by teachers. However,
the body charged with carrying out government policy on assessment had no strategy either to study or
to develop the formative assessment of teachers and did no more than devote a tiny fraction of its
resources to such work.12 Most of the available resources and most of the public and political attention
were focused on national external tests. While teachers' contributions to these "summative assessments"
have been given some formal status, hardly any attention has been paid to their contributions through
formative assessment. Moreover, the problems of the relationship between teachers' formative and
summative roles have received no attention.
It is possible that many of the commitments were stated in the belief that formative assessment was not
problematic, that it already happened all the time and needed no more than formal acknowledgment of
its existence. However, it is also clear that the political commitment to external testing in order to
promote competition had a central priority, while the commitment to formative assessment was
marginal. As researchers the world over have found, high-stakes external tests always dominate teaching
and assessment. However, they give teachers poor models for formative assessment because of their
limited function of providing overall summaries of achievement rather than helpful diagnosis. Given this
fact, it is hardly surprising that numerous research studies of the implementation of the education
reforms in the United Kingdom have found that formative assessment is "seriously in need of
development."13 With hindsight, we can see that the failure to perceive the need for substantial support
for formative assessment and to take responsibility for developing such support was a serious error.
In the U.S. similar pressures have been felt from political movements characterized by a distrust of
teachers and a belief that external testing will, on its own, improve learning. Such fractured relationships
between policy makers and the teaching profession are not inevitable -- indeed, many countries with
enviable educational achievements seem to manage well with policies that show greater respect and
support for teachers. While the situation in the U.S. is far more diverse than that in England and Wales,
the effects of high-stakes state-mandated testing are very similar to those of the external tests in the
United Kingdom. Moreover, the traditional reliance on multiple-choice testing in the U.S. -- not shared
in the United Kingdom -- has exacerbated the negative effects of such policies on the quality of
classroom learning.
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How Can We Improve Formative Assessment?
The self-esteem of pupils. A report of schools in Switzerland states that "a number of pupils . . . are
content to 'get by.' . . . Every teacher who wants to practice formative assessment must reconstruct the
teaching contracts so as to counteract the habits acquired by his pupils."14
The ultimate user of assessment information that is elicited in order to improve learning is the pupil.
There are negative and positive aspects of this fact. The negative aspect is illustrated by the preceding
quotation. When the classroom culture focuses on rewards, "gold stars," grades, or class ranking, then
pupils look for ways to obtain the best marks rather than to improve their learning. One reported
consequence is that, when they have any choice, pupils avoid difficult tasks. They also spend time and
energy looking for clues to the "right answer." Indeed, many become reluctant to ask questions out of a
fear of failure. Pupils who encounter difficulties are led to believe that they lack ability, and this belief
leads them to attribute their difficulties to a defect in themselves about which they cannot do a great
deal. Thus they avoid investing effort in learning that can lead only to disappointment, and they try to
build up their self-esteem in other ways.
The positive aspect of students' being the primary users of the information gleaned from formative
assessments is that negative outcomes -- such as an obsessive focus on competition and the attendant
fear of failure on the part of low achievers -- are not inevitable. What is needed is a culture of success,
backed by a belief that all pupils can achieve. In this regard, formative assessment can be a powerful
weapon if it is communicated in the right way. While formative assessment can help all pupils, it yields
particularly good results with low achievers by concentrating on specific problems with their work and
giving them a clear understanding of what is wrong and how to put it right. Pupils can accept and work
with such messages, provided that they are not clouded by overtones about ability, competition, and
comparison with others. In summary, the message can be stated as follows: feedback to any pupil should
be about the particular qualities of his or her work, with advice on what he or she can do to improve,
and should avoid comparisons with other pupils.
Self-assessment by pupils. Many successful innovations have developed self- and peer-assessment by
pupils as ways of enhancing formative assessment, and such work has achieved some success with
pupils from age 5 upward. This link of formative assessment to self-assessment is not an accident;
indeed, it is inevitable.
To explain this last statement, we should first note that the main problem that those who are developing
self-assessments encounter is not a problem of reliability and trustworthiness. Pupils are generally
honest and reliable in assessing both themselves and one another; they can even be too hard on
themselves. The main problem is that pupils can assess themselves only when they have a sufficiently
clear picture of the targets that their learning is meant to attain. Surprisingly, and sadly, many pupils do
not have such a picture, and they appear to have become accustomed to receiving classroom teaching as
an arbitrary sequence of exercises with no overarching rationale. To overcome this pattern of passive
reception requires hard and sustained work. When pupils do acquire such an overview, they then become
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more committed and more effective as learners. Moreover, their own assessments become an object of
discussion with their teachers and with one another, and this discussion further promotes the reflection
on one's own thinking that is essential to good learning.
Thus self-assessment by pupils, far from being a luxury, is in fact an essential component of formative
assessment. When anyone is trying to learn, feedback about the effort has three elements: recognition of
the desired goal, evidence about present position, and some understanding of a way to close the gap
between the two.15 All three must be understood to some degree by anyone before he or she can take
action to improve learning.
Such an argument is consistent with more general ideas established by research into the way people
learn. New understandings are not simply swallowed and stored in isolation; they have to be assimilated
in relation to preexisting ideas. The new and the old may be inconsistent or even in conflict, and the
disparities must be resolved by thoughtful actions on the part of the learner. Realizing that there are new
goals for the learning is an essential part of this process of assimilation. Thus we conclude: if formative
assessment is to be productive, pupils should be trained in self-assessment so that they can understand
the main purposes of their learning and thereby grasp what they need to do to achieve.
The evolution of effective teaching. The research studies referred to above show very clearly that
effective programs of formative assessment involve far more than the addition of a few observations and
tests to an existing program. They require careful scrutiny of all the main components of a teaching plan.
Indeed, it is clear that instruction and formative assessment are indivisible.
To begin at the beginning, the choice of tasks for classroom work and homework is important. Tasks
have to be justified in terms of the learning aims that they serve, and they can work well only if
opportunities for pupils to communicate their evolving understanding are built into the planning.
Discussion, observation of activities, and marking of written work can all be used to provide those
opportunities, but it is then important to look at or listen carefully to the talk, the writing, and the actions
through which pupils develop and display the state of their understanding. Thus we maintain that
opportunities for pupils to express their understanding should be designed into any piece of teaching,
for this will initiate the interaction through which formative assessment aids learning.
Discussions in which pupils are led to talk about their understanding in their own ways are important
aids to increasing knowledge and improving understanding. Dialogue with the teacher provides the
opportunity for the teacher to respond to and reorient a pupil's thinking. However, there are clearly
recorded examples of such discussions in which teachers have, quite unconsciously, responded in ways
that would inhibit the future learning of a pupil. What the examples have in common is that the teacher
is looking for a particular response and lacks the flexibility or the confidence to deal with the
unexpected. So the teacher tries to direct the pupil toward giving the expected answer. In manipulating
the dialogue in this way, the teacher seals off any unusual, often thoughtful but unorthodox, attempts by
pupils to work out their own answers. Over time the pupils get the message: they are not required to
think out their own answers. The object of the exercise is to work out -- or guess -- what answer the
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teacher expects to see or hear.
A particular feature of the talk between teacher and pupils is the asking of questions by the teacher. This
natural and direct way of checking on learning is often unproductive. One common problem is that,
following a question, teachers do not wait long enough to allow pupils to think out their answers. When
a teacher answers his or her own question after only two or three seconds and when a minute of silence
is not tolerable, there is no possibility that a pupil can think out what to say.
There are then two consequences. One is that, because the only questions that can produce answers in
such a short time are questions of fact, these predominate. The other is that pupils don't even try to think
out a response. Because they know that the answer, followed by another question, will come along in a
few seconds, there is no point in trying. It is also generally the case that only a few pupils in a class
answer the teacher's questions. The rest then leave it to these few, knowing that they cannot respond as
quickly and being unwilling to risk making mistakes in public. So the teacher, by lowering the level of
questions and by accepting answers from a few, can keep the lesson going but is actually out of touch
with the understanding of most of the class. The question/answer dialogue becomes a ritual, one in
which thoughtful involvement suffers.
There are several ways to break this particular cycle. They involve giving pupils time to respond; asking
them to discuss their thinking in pairs or in small groups, so that a respondent is speaking on behalf of
others; giving pupils a choice between different possible answers and asking them to vote on the
options; asking all of them to write down an answer and then reading out a selected few; and so on.
What is essential is that any dialogue should evoke thoughtful reflection in which all pupils can be
encouraged to take part, for only then can the formative process start to work. In short, the dialogue
between pupils and a teacher should be thoughtful, reflective, focused to evoke and explore
understanding, and conducted so that all pupils have an opportunity to think and to express their ideas.
Tests given in class and tests and other exercises assigned for homework are also important means of
promoting feedback. A good test can be an occasion for learning. It is better to have frequent short tests
than infrequent long ones. Any new learning should first be tested within about a week of a first
encounter, but more frequent tests are counterproductive. The quality of the test items -- that is, their
relevance to the main learning aims and their clear communication to the pupil -- requires scrutiny as
well. Good questions are hard to generate, and teachers should collaborate and draw on outside sources
to collect such questions.
Given questions of good quality, it is essential to ensure the quality of the feedback. Research studies
have shown that, if pupils are given only marks or grades, they do not benefit from the feedback. The
worst scenario is one in which some pupils who get low marks this time also got low marks last time and
come to expect to get low marks next time. This cycle of repeated failure becomes part of a shared belief
between such students and their teacher. Feedback has been shown to improve learning when it gives
each pupil specific guidance on strengths and weaknesses, preferably without any overall marks. Thus
the way in which test results are reported to pupils so that they can identify their own strengths and
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weaknesses is critical. Pupils must be given the means and opportunities to work with evidence of their
difficulties. For formative purposes, a test at the end of a unit or teaching module is pointless; it is too
late to work with the results. We conclude that the feedback on tests, seatwork, and homework should
give each pupil guidance on how to improve, and each pupil must be given help and an opportunity to
work on the improvement.
All these points make clear that there is no one simple way to improve formative assessment. What is
common to them is that a teacher's approach should start by being realistic and confronting the question
"Do I really know enough about the understanding of my pupils to be able to help each of them?"
Much of the work teachers must do to make good use of formative assessment can give rise to
difficulties. Some pupils will resist attempts to change accustomed routines, for any such change is
uncomfortable, and emphasis on the challenge to think for yourself (and not just to work harder) can be
threatening to many. Pupils cannot be expected to believe in the value of changes for their learning
before they have experienced the benefits of such changes. Moreover, many of the initiatives that are
needed take more class time, particularly when a central purpose is to change the outlook on learning
and the working methods of pupils. Thus teachers have to take risks in the belief that such investment of
time will yield rewards in the future, while "delivery" and "coverage" with poor understanding are
pointless and can even be harmful.
Teachers must deal with two basic issues that are the source of many of the problems associated with
changing to a system of formative assessment. The first is the nature of each teacher's beliefs about
learning. If the teacher assumes that knowledge is to be transmitted and learned, that understanding will
develop later, and that clarity of exposition accompanied by rewards for patient reception are the
essentials of good teaching, then formative assessment is hardly necessary. However, most teachers
accept the wealth of evidence that this transmission model does not work, even when judged by its own
criteria, and so are willing to make a commitment to teaching through interaction. Formative assessment
is an essential component of such instruction. We do not mean to imply that individualized, one-on-one
teaching is the only solution; rather we mean that what is needed is a classroom culture of questioning
and deep thinking, in which pupils learn from shared discussions with teachers and peers. What emerges
very clearly here is the indivisibility of instruction and formative assessment practices.
The other issue that can create problems for teachers who wish to adopt an interactive model of teaching
and learning relates to the beliefs teachers hold about the potential of all their pupils for learning. To
sharpen the contrast by overstating it, there is on the one hand the "fixed I.Q." view -- a belief that each
pupil has a fixed, inherited intelligence that cannot be altered much by schooling. On the other hand,
there is the "untapped potential" view -- a belief that starts from the assumption that so-called ability is a
complex of skills that can be learned. Here, we argue for the underlying belief that all pupils can learn
more effectively if one can clear away, by sensitive handling, the obstacles to learning, be they cognitive
failures never diagnosed or damage to personal confidence or a combination of the two. Clearly the truth
lies between these two extremes, but the evidence is that ways of managing formative assessment that
work with the assumptions of "untapped potential" do help all pupils to learn and can give particular
help to those who have previously struggled.
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Policy and Practice
Changing the policy perspective. The assumptions that drive national and state policies for assessment
have to be called into question. The promotion of testing as an important component for establishing a
competitive market in education can be very harmful. The more recent shifting of emphasis toward
setting targets for all, with assessment providing a touchstone to help check pupils' attainments, is a
more mature position. However, we would argue that there is a need now to move further, to focus on
the inside of the "black box" and so to explore the potential of assessment to raise standards directly as
an integral part of each pupil's learning work.
It follows from this view that several changes are needed. First, policy ought to start with a recognition
that the prime locus for raising standards is the classroom, so that the overarching priority has to be the
promotion and support of change within the classroom. Attempts to raise standards by reforming the
inputs to and measuring the outputs from the black box of the classroom can be helpful, but they are not
adequate on their own. Indeed, their helpfulness can be judged only in light of their effects in classrooms.
The evidence we have presented here establishes that a clearly productive way to start implementing a
classroom-focused policy would be to improve formative assessment. This same evidence also
establishes that in doing so we would not be concentrating on some minor aspect of the business of
teaching and learning. Rather, we would be concentrating on several essential elements: the quality of
teacher/pupil interactions, the stimulus and help for pupils to take active responsibility for their own
learning, the particular help needed to move pupils out of the trap of "low achievement," and the
development of the habits necessary for all students to become lifelong learners. Improvements in
formative assessment, which are within the reach of all teachers, can contribute substantially to raising
standards in all these ways.
Four steps to implementation. If we accept the argument outlined above, what needs to be done? The
proposals outlined below do not follow directly from our analysis of assessment research. They are
consistent with its main findings, but they also call on more general sources for guidance.16
At one extreme, one might call for more research to find out how best to carry out such work; at the
other, one might call for an immediate and large-scale program, with new guidelines that all teachers
should put into practice. Neither of these alternatives is sensible: while the first is unnecessary because
enough is known from the results of research, the second would be unjustified because not enough is
known about classroom practicalities in the context of any one country's schools.
Thus the improvement of formative assessment cannot be a simple matter. There is no quick fix that can
alter existing practice by promising rapid rewards. On the contrary, if the substantial rewards promised
by the research evidence are to be secured, each teacher must find his or her own ways of incorporating
the lessons and ideas set out above into his or her own patterns of classroom work and into the cultural
norms and expectations of a particular school community.17 This process is a relatively slow one and
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takes place through sustained programs of professional development and support. This fact does not
weaken the message here; indeed, it should be seen as a sign of its authenticity, for lasting and
fundamental improvements in teaching and learning must take place in this way. A recent international
study of innovation and change in education, encompassing 23 projects in 13 member countries of the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, has arrived at exactly the same conclusion
with regard to effective policies for change.18 Such arguments lead us to propose a four-point scheme
for teacher development.
1. Learning from development. Teachers will not take up ideas that sound attractive, no matter how
extensive the research base, if the ideas are presented as general principles that leave the task of
translating them into everyday practice entirely up to the teachers. Their classroom lives are too busy
and too fragile for all but an outstanding few to undertake such work. What teachers need is a variety of
living examples of implementation, as practiced by teachers with whom they can identify and from
whom they can derive the confidence that they can do better. They need to see examples of what doing
better means in practice.
So changing teachers' practice cannot begin with an extensive program of training for all; that could be
justified only if it could be claimed that we have enough "trainers" who know what to do, which is
certainly not the case. The essential first step is to set up a small number of local groups of schools --
some primary, some secondary, some inner-city, some from outer suburbs, some rural -- with each
school committed both to a school-based development of formative assessment and to collaboration with
other schools in its local group. In such a process, the teachers in their classrooms will be working out
the answers to many of the practical questions that the evidence presented here cannot answer. They will
be reformulating the issues, perhaps in relation to fundamental insights and certainly in terms that make
sense to their peers in other classrooms. It is also essential to carry out such development in a range of
subject areas, for the research in mathematics education is significantly different from that in language,
which is different again from that in the creative arts.
The schools involved would need extra support in order to give their teachers time to plan the initiative
in light of existing evidence, to reflect on their experience as it develops, and to offer advice about
training others in the future. In addition, there would be a need for external evaluators to help the
teachers with their development work and to collect evidence of its effectiveness. Video studies of
classroom work would be essential for disseminating findings to others.
2. Dissemination. This dimension of the implementation would be in low gear at the outset -- offering
schools no more than general encouragement and explanation of some of the relevant evidence that they
might consider in light of their existing practices. Dissemination efforts would become more active as
results and resources became available from the development program. Then strategies for wider
dissemination -- for example, earmarking funds for inservice training programs -- would have to be
pursued.
We must emphasize that this process will inevitably be a slow one. To repeat what we said above, if the
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substantial rewards promised by the evidence are to be secured, each teacher must find his or her own
ways of incorporating the lessons and ideas that are set out above into his or her own patterns of
classroom work. Even with optimum training and support, such a process will take time.
3. Reducing obstacles. All features in the education system that actually obstruct the development of
effective formative assessment should be examined to see how their negative effects can be reduced.
Consider the conclusions from a study of teachers of English in U.S. secondary schools.
Most of the teachers in this study were caught in conflicts among belief systems and
institutional structures, agendas, and values. The point of friction among these conflicts
was assessment, which was associated with very powerful feelings of being overwhelmed,
and of insecurity, guilt, frustration, and anger. . . . This study suggests that assessment, as
it occurs in schools, is far from a merely technical problem. Rather, it is deeply social and
personal.19
The chief negative influence here is that of short external tests. Such tests can dominate teachers' work,
and, insofar as they encourage drilling to produce right answers to short, out-of-context questions, they
can lead teachers to act against their own better judgment about the best ways to develop the learning of
their pupils. This is not to argue that all such tests are unhelpful. Indeed, they have an important role to
play in securing public confidence in the accountability of schools. For the immediate future, what is
needed in any development program for formative assessment is to study the interactions between these
external tests and formative assessments to see how the models of assessment that external tests can
provide could be made more helpful.
All teachers have to undertake some summative assessment. They must report to parents and produce
end-of-year reports as classes are due to move on to new teachers. However, the task of assessing pupils
summatively for external purposes is clearly different from the task of assessing ongoing work to
monitor and improve progress. Some argue that these two roles are so different that they should be kept
apart. We do not see how this can be done, given that teachers must have some share of responsibility
for the former and must take the leading responsibility for the latter.20 However, teachers clearly face
difficult problems in reconciling their formative and summative roles, and confusion in teachers' minds
between these roles can impede the improvement of practice.
The arguments here could be taken much further to make the case that teachers should play a far greater
role in contributing to summative assessments for accountability. One strong reason for giving teachers a
greater role is that they have access to the performance of their pupils in a variety of contexts and over
extended periods of time.
This is an important advantage because sampling pupils' achievement by means of short exercises taken
under the conditions of formal testing is fraught with dangers. It is now clear that performance in any
task varies with the context in which it is presented. Thus some pupils who seem incompetent in tackling
a problem under test conditions can look quite different in the more realistic conditions of an everyday
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encounter with an equivalent problem. Indeed, the conditions under which formal tests are taken
threaten validity because they are quite unlike those of everyday performance. An outstanding example
here is that collaborative work is very important in everyday life but is forbidden by current norms of
formal testing.21 These points open up wider arguments about assessment systems as a whole --
arguments that are beyond the scope of this article.
4. Research. It is not difficult to set out a list of questions that would justify further research in this area.
Although there are many and varied reports of successful innovations, they generally fail to give clear
accounts of one or another of the important details. For example, they are often silent about the actual
classroom methods used, the motivation and experience of the teachers, the nature of the tests used as
measures of success, or the outlooks and expectations of the pupils involved.
However, while there is ample justification for proceeding with carefully formulated projects, we do not
suggest that everyone else should wait for their conclusions. Enough is known to provide a basis for
active development work, and some of the most important questions can be answered only through a
program of practical implementation.
Directions for future research could include a study of the ways in which teachers understand and deal
with the relationship between their formative and summative roles or a comparative study of the
predictive validity of teachers' summative assessments versus external test results. Many more questions
could be formulated, and it is important for future development that some of these problems be tackled
by basic research. At the same time, experienced researchers would also have a vital role to play in the
evaluation of the development programs we have proposed.
Are We Serious About Raising Standards?
The findings summarized above and the program we have outlined have implications for a variety of
responsible agencies. However, it is the responsibility of governments to take the lead. It would be
premature and out of order for us to try to consider the relative roles in such an effort, although success
would clearly depend on cooperation among government agencies, academic researchers, and school-
based educators.
The main plank of our argument is that standards can be raised only by changes that are put into direct
effect by teachers and pupils in classrooms. There is a body of firm evidence that formative assessment
is an essential component of classroom work and that its development can raise standards of
achievement. We know of no other way of raising standards for which such a strong prima facie case
can be made. Our plea is that national and state policy makers will grasp this opportunity and take the
lead in this direction.
1. James W. Stigler and James Hiebert, "Understanding and Improving Classroom Mathematics
Instruction: An Overview of the TIMSS Video Study," Phi Delta Kappan, September 1997, pp. 19-20.
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2. There is no internationally agreed-upon term here. "Classroom evaluation," "classroom assessment,"
"internal assessment," "instructional assessment," and "student assessment" have been used by different
authors, and some of these terms have different meanings in different texts.
3. Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam, "Assessment and Classroom Learning," Assessment in Education,
March 1998, pp. 7-74.
4. Lynn S. Fuchs and Douglas Fuchs, "Effects of Systematic Formative Evaluation: A Meta-Analysis,"
Exceptional Children, vol. 53, 1986, pp. 199-208.
5. See Albert E. Beaton et al., Mathematics Achievement in the Middle School Years (Boston: Boston
College, 1996).
6. Lynn S. Fuchs et al., "Effects of Task-Focused Goals on Low-Achieving Students with and Without
Learning Disabilities," American Educational Research Journal, vol. 34, 1997, pp. 513-43.
7. OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education), Subjects and Standards: Issues for School Development
Arising from OFSTED Inspection Findings 1994-5: Key Stages 3 and 4 and Post-16 (London: Her
Majesty's Stationery Office, 1996), p. 40.
8. Nicholas Daws and Birendra Singh, "Formative Assessment: To What Extent Is Its Potential to
Enhance Pupils' Science Being Realized?," School Science Review, vol. 77, 1996, p. 99.
9. Clement Dassa, Jesús Vazquez-Abad, and Djavid Ajar, "Formative Assessment in a Classroom
Setting: From Practice to Computer Innovations," Alberta Journal of Educational Research, vol. 39,
1993, p. 116.
10. D. Monty Neill, "Transforming Student Assessment," Phi Delta Kappan, September 1997, pp. 35-36.
11. Task Group on Assessment and Testing: A Report (London: Department of Education and Science
and the Welsh Office, 1988).
12. Richard Daugherty, National Curriculum Assessment: A Review of Policy, 1987-1994 (London:
Falmer Press, 1995).
13. Terry A. Russell, Anne Qualter, and Linda McGuigan, "Reflections on the Implementation of
National Curriculum Science Policy for the 5-14 Age Range: Findings and Interpretations from a
National Evaluation Study in England," International Journal of Science Education, vol. 17, 1995, pp.
481-92.
14. Phillipe Perrenoud, "Towards a Pragmatic Approach to Formative Evaluation," in Penelope Weston,
ed., Assessment of Pupils' Achievement: Motivation and School Success (Amsterdam: Swets and
Zeitlinger, 1991), p. 92.
15. D. Royce Sadler, "Formative Assessment and the Design of Instructional Systems," Instructional
Science, vol. 18, 1989, pp. 119-44.
16. Paul J. Black and J. Myron Atkin, Changing the Subject: Innovations in Science, Mathematics, and
Technology Education (London: Routledge for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development, 1996); and Michael G. Fullan, with Suzanne Stiegelbauer, The New Meaning of
Educational Change (London: Cassell, 1991).
17. See Stigler and Hiebert, pp. 19-20.
18. Black and Atkin, op. cit.
19. Peter Johnston et al., "Assessment of Teaching and Learning in Literature-Based Classrooms,"
Teaching and Teacher Education, vol. 11, 1995, p. 359.
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20. Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black, "Meanings and Consequences: A Basis for Distinguishing Formative
and Summative Functions of Assessment," British Educational Research Journal, vol. 22, 1996, pp. 537-
48.
21. These points are developed in some detail in Sam Wineburg, "T. S. Eliot, Collaboration, and the
Quandaries of Assessment in a Rapidly Changing World," Phi Delta Kappan, September 1997, pp. 59-
65.
PAUL BLACK is professor emeritus in the School of Education, King's College, London, where DYLAN
WILIAM is head of school and professor of educational assessment.
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