Assessment and classroom learning By Black, Paul, Wiliam, Dylan, Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice Mar1998, Vol. 5, Issue 1

ABSTRACT

This article is a review of the literature on classroom formative assessment. Several studies show firm evidence that innovations designed to strengthen the frequent feedback that students receive about their learning yield substantial learning gains. The perceptions of students and their role in self-assessment are considered alongside analysis of' the strategies used by teachers and the formative strategies incorporated in such systemic approaches as mastery learning. There follows a more detailed and theoretical analysis of the nature of feedback, which provides a basis for a discussion of the development of theoretical models for formative assessment and of the prospects for the improvement of practice.

Introduction
One of the outstanding features of studies of assessment in recent years has been the shift in the focus of attention, towards greater interest in the interactions between assessment and classroom learning and away from concentration on the properties of restricted forms of test which are only weakly linked to the learning experiences of" students. This shift has been coupled with many expressions of hope that improvement in classroom assessment will make a strong contribution to the improvement of learning. So one main purpose of this review is to survey the evidence which might show whether or not such hope is justified. A second purpose is to see whether the theoretical and practical issues associated with assessment for learning can be illuminated by a synthesis of the insights arising amongst the diverse studies that have been reported.

The purpose of this Introduction is to clarify some of the key terminology that we use, to discuss some earlier reviews which define the