Classroom assessment is defined as the process teachers and students use to collect, evaluate and use evidence of student learning. Teachers collect data and information to understand what students know, understand and can do. Assessment includes tests, projects, papers and portfolios, as well as informal data collection such as observation and questioning of students.
Assessment becomes formative when the evidence collected is used to adapt teaching to meet the identified student needs. With cognitive learning theories shifting from a focus on learning as knowledge to emphasis on learning transfer, problem-solving and metacognition, there has been a subsequent shift from focus on summative assessment to formative assessment. A corresponding shift has occurred in assessment research from a focus on assessment of learning to assessment for learning and assessment as learning. The question educators must ask is, "How can classroom assessment be an actual learning tool and not just a summative measure of learning?" Along with this shift of assessment as a learning focus comes documented knowledge about the benefit of student involvement -- in the form of peer- and self-assessment -- showing increases in student metacognition and ownership of learning.
Editor James McMillan concludes in the SAGE Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment that classroom assessment is the most influential form of assessment on student learning.
McMillan, James H., ed. SAGE Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment. New York: Sage Publications Inc., 2013.
A landmark literature review by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam in 1998 found a direct link between formative assessment and learning. Black and Wiliam identify as least 20 studies that show that innovations that strengthen formative assessment produce significant and “often substantial” learning gains.
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). "Assessment and classroom learning." Assessment in Education, 5 (1), 7-74.
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (2010). “Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards through Classroom Assessment.” Phi Delta Kappan, 92 (1), 81-90.