Formative assessment

Formative assessment is assessment during the learning process, aimed at steering it. The outcome leads not to a grade or a certificate but to insight, for the learner and the coach, into what has not landed yet. Summative assessment does the opposite: at the end, it establishes whether somebody meets the standard.

The assessment itself is one of the strongest learning instruments there is. Retrieving something from memory strengthens the memory more than reading it again does, so the test is not only the measurement but also the exercise.

In compliance-driven environments almost all assessment is summative: passed or not, certificate or not. That is understandable but it leaves learning on the table. Short interim questions without consequences, spread over weeks, noticeably raise the final result and also make visible which failure mode has not stuck across a whole shift, information you can no longer use once you are at the final test.