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在现代教育研究和实践学习评价的重要性日益认识到学习评价有助于教师了解学生的基本情况，了解学生的学习和发展与现状的困难，从而有针对性地解决问题，如教学和学习活动，提高学生的性能的适当调整。众所周知，学习评价方法有形成性评价、终结性评价等。不同的评价方法各有利弊，针对不同的学习方法，应采取相应的评价方法，确保学习评价能起到预期的作用。然而，在现实的实践中，由于没有采取正确的评价，导致评价没有起到应有的作用，正如Dylan Wiliam所说，“我们尝试学习性评价，它不工作。但那是因为他们没有尝试对学习的评估。以中国的高中教育为例，目前，教育部门和教师意识到自主学习方法的重要性。努力培养和提高学生的自主学习能力。然而，他们仍然采用终结性评价，而不是形成性评价作为学习评价的方式，导致学生的自主学习能力没有如预期的那样提高）。本研究以高中语文学习评价为研究对象，研究如何建立和实施对高中生自主学习方式的形成性评价，以达到提高高中生自主学习能力的目的。本研究首先介绍了自主学习、终结性评价和形成性评价的特点。然后，它批判了当前高中教育评估方法在中国。最后，就如何建立和实施形成性评价对中国高中生自主学习方式的评价提出建议。
1.0 Introduction 简介
The importance of the assessment for learning in modern educational research and practice is increasingly recognized that the assessment for learning helps teachers to understand the basic situation of students, to understand the difficulties and current conditions of student learning and development, and thus solving problems in a targeted way, such as the appropriate adjustment of teaching and learning activities to improve the performance of students (McDonald and Boud, 2003). It is well-known that there are various learning assessment methods, including formative assessment, summative assessment and so on. Different assessment methods have different advantages and disadvantages, for different learning methods, it should take the appropriate assessment methods to ensure that learning assessment can play the desired role. However, in the practice of reality, because of failing to take the correct way of assessment, it leads to that the assessment does not play the desired role, as what Dylan Wiliam said, “We tried assessment for learning and it did not work. But that's because (they) didn’t try the assessment for learning that does work. Taking China's high school education as an example, currently, the education departments and teachers are aware of the importance of autonomous learning methods. They try to cultivate and improve students' autonomous learning ability. However, they still use summative assessment rather than formative assessment as the way for learning assessment, which leads to that students' autonomous learning ability has not been improved as what they have expected (Zou and Zhang, 2013). In this study, it takes the assessment for learning in Chinese high school as the research object to study how to establish and implement the formative assessment towards Chinese high school students’ autonomous learning methods in order to achieve the purpose of improving autonomous learning ability of Chinese high school students’. This study first of all introduces the characteristics of autonomous learning, summative assessment, and formative assessment. Then, it criticizes the current assessment methods of high school education in China. Finally, it recommends on how to establish and implement formative assessment to assess Chinese high school students’ autonomous learning methods.
2.0 Body 正文
2.1 Autonomous learning
Autonomous learning is a way of learning that corresponds to traditional learning. Traditional learning methods are too prominent and stressed to accept and master, neglecting and ignoring discovery and exploration, which in practice leads to the extreme processing of students’ understanding process, so that students’ learning process becomes a passive acceptance, reciting process (Boud, 1995). This learning suffocates people's thinking and wisdom, destroying students’ learning interest and enthusiasm. It not only can not promote students’ development, but also becomes the resistance of students’ development. It makes learning be based on the objectivity, acceptability, dependency of students, leading to that students’ initiative, independence has been eroded, which seriously depresses students’ interest and enthusiasm in learning (Boud, 1995). Autonomous learning takes students as the main body of learning, through students’ independently analyzing, exploring, practicing, questioning, creating and other methods to achieve learning goals. Traditional teaching emphasizes accepted, passive learning styles, the goal of autonomous learning is to change the situation of too much emphasis on passive learning in education, it advocates students’ taking the initiative to participate, willingness in exploring, diligent attitude, it trains students’ ability to collect and process information, the ability to acquire new knowledge, the ability to analyze and solve problems, and the ability to communicate and collaborate with other people (Nicol, 1997; Boud and Molloy, 2013).
Cultivating autonomous learning ability is needed for social development. Faced with the challenges of the new century, people should adapt to the rapid development of science and technology situation, as well as adapt to the requirements of professional conversion and knowledge update frequency, relying on school knowledge is unable for people to meet the above-mentioned purposes, thus everyone must study for life. Lifelong learning ability become the basic qualities that a person must have. In the future development, whether students are competitive, whether they have great potential, whether they have the ability to master knowledge in the information age fundamentally depends on whether students have the ability to study lifelong, so that students should know how to learn in the foundational education stage, which has become a problem that many countries in the world today attach great importance to. Lifelong learning is generally not carried out in schools, there is no teacher accompanying, it depends on a person's autonomous learning ability (Black and Wiliam, 1998; Ivanic et al., 2000). It can be seen that the ability of autonomous learning has become the basic ability of human survival in the 21st century. At the same time as educators, they should more soberly know that in today's era of knowledge, any education can not pass on all human knowledge to learners, the task of education must be cultivating students’ ability to learn, rather than making students learn knowledge. Cultivating students' learning ability is the essence of learning (Black, McCormick, James and Pedder, 2006).
2.2 Formative assessment
Traditional assessment is summative assessment, it refers to the activities carried out for making value judgments on effectiveness of learning. The purpose of the assessment is to identify and select, rather than to promote learning and improve performance; the assessment is concerned about the learning results, rather than the learning process; the assessment methods focus on pen and paper examinations or tests, assessment for learning and examination are often regarded as a same thing, it seems that only exams can be objective, scientific, and just in screening students to provide information on learning regulation (Harlen and Crick, 2003). This makes many students study for scores, and to a large extent, the assessment fails to have the functions of promoting learning and improving performance, it becomes a means for teachers to compel students to learn and it is also a source of intense competition among students to go against cultivating students’ innovative awareness, creative thinking and creative ability, nor is it conducive to students in-depth study. On the basis of reflection on summative assessment, formative assessment has been developed and valued (Dweck 1999; Torrance, 2012; Boud and Molloy, 2013).
Formative assessment refers to the evaluation carried out in the process when an activity is implemented to correct the activity to make the effectiveness of better. The main purpose of formative assessment is to clarify the problems and improvements in the operation of the event, and to revise or adjust the activity plan in a timely manner to achieving a more satisfactory effect (McDonald and Boud 2003). Formative assessment is the evaluation of a student's learning process, to identify the student's potential to improve and develop the student’s learning. The task of formative assessment is to evaluate the performance of a student in daily learning process, his achievements and reflected emotions, attitudes, strategies, etc. (Boud and Molloy, 2013). The purpose is to motivate students’ learning and help students’ to effectively control their own learning process, so that students will get a sense of accomplishment to enhance self-confidence and cultivate the spirit of cooperation (Taras; 2001, 2002, 2003). Formative assessment is not simply from the needs of an evaluator, but more paying attention to the needs of those evaluated to attach importance to the process of learning and the experience of students’ in learning; it has an emphasis on the interaction between people and a variety of factors of interaction in assessment, as well as the communication between teachers and students (Torrance, 2012). In formative assessment, a teacher's duty is to determine tasks, collect information, discuss with students, play the role of guiding in discussion and to evaluate together with students (Sadler, 1998; Sadler, 1989).#p#分页标题#e#
2.3 Significance of formative assessment for autonomous learning
2.3.1 Stimulate motivation to learn
Formative assessment advocates incentive assessment. Teachers encourage students to find their own strengths in the assessment, teachers affirm students’ progress and achievements in learning, and thus fully mobilizing the initiative and consciousness of their autonomous learning. Formative assessment emphasizes that the results of the evaluation should be fed back to students in a scientific, appropriate and constructive way to maximize their acceptance, so as to help students to build a more objective and comprehensive understanding of their own, thereby promoting their further development (Freeman and Lewis, 1998; Sadler, 1989). Formative assessment activities provide students with opportunities and platforms for self-presentation, encouraging them to demonstrate their efforts and achievements, coupled with positive, appropriate evaluation methods and feedback methods to make it an effective incentive means (Sadler, 1989).
2.3.2 Cognition and adjustment of learning strategies
Learning strategies are special thoughts and behaviors that learners use to help with understanding, learning and remembering new information. Cao (2012) pointed out that any use of appropriate learning strategies is likely to enable learners to obtain learning success. The lack of learning strategies is a common problem in high school students' learning process (Nicol and Dick, 2006). Poor self-control students in the learning process almost have no pre-class preview, after-school review, reflection and other behavior of improving learning methods. Some students even have a certain learning strategy, in learning, they still have a lot of randomness and there is no plan (Zou and Zhang, 2013). Through formative assessment, it enables students to understand their own completion of a learning task to know their direction of making efforts clearly, so that they can make timely adjustment of learning methods and focus to find their own learning strategies (Torrance, 2012). Teachers can also make use of classroom evaluation and interviews and other formative assessment means to have a timely detection of the problems that students have in the use of learning strategies to guide and promote students’ continuous adjustment (Nicola and Dick, 2011; Denver Public School, 2011).
2.3.3 Enhance autonomous monitoring and improve learning engagement
Research shows that in autonomous learning, effect of autonomous monitoring learning is better than the effect of learning relying on teachers’ control. Therefore, it is very important to conduct autonomous monitoring training for students. And the autonomous assessment and mutual assessment of formative assessment focus on the participation of students in teaching evaluation and become an effective method of autonomous monitoring (Zou and Zhang, 2013). Students' participation in assessment usually leads to varying degrees of pressure and motivation for students to stimulate their intrinsic motivation (Black et al., 2006). If students are actively involved in learning and evaluation activities and are thinking about the next step, which will enable students to develop good reflection and summary habits to enhance their autonomous monitoring and promote their self-discipline learning (Sadler, 1989). Formative assessment allows students to understand their academic levels to accurately find the starting point of learning. It helps students to understand their own learning personality and learning style, so as to find their own personalized learning methods and learning strategies. Students will be able to identify, select and integrate information obtained from various channels to determine their own learning content and choose the learning materials flexibly after class (Nicola and Dick, 2011).
2.3.4 Enhance autonomous efficacy
Garcia (1995) argues that autonomous efficacy is an important intrinsic factor influencing students' autonomous learning. Autonomous efficacy is the judgment about whether an individual has the ability to organize and perform a particular act, and it is the concrete manifestation of self-confidence in a task. Allowing students to often experience their progress in learning is an effective way to enhance their autonomous efficacy. Formative assessment is an important way to enable students to experience their progress in learning (Zimmerman, 1992). Formative assessment is helpful to help students to discover their innate talent and potential as early as possible, taking this as a starting point, with the help of personalization and humane way to provide themselves with a variety of appropriate learning support to achieve independent development on the basis of the existing development (Gibbs, 2004). Formative assessment helps students to build confidence, exercising their will to overcome difficulties and promoting their understanding of their strengths, deficiencies to develop healthy and progressive character, so as to acquire successful experience in learning to achieve a strong autonomous efficacy, thereby promoting the development of their autonomous learning ability (Black et al., 2006).
2.3.5 Improve sense of responsibility for learning
The ultimate goal of education is not simply to acquire knowledge, but to constantly use it to make students deepen their understanding of their learning process. This gives students a better foundation for lifelong learning (Cowan, 1999). Portfolio assessment in formative assessment can more effectively make students be aware of their problems existing in learning process and learning methods, so as to improve students' autonomous monitoring, adjusting and evaluating ability. Through evaluation and reflection on portfolio material, they have no longer just learned what teachers teach, they become learners who are responsible for their learning, they know what mastered, what they fail to master and how to learn effectively (Lam, 2017). Students' autonomous learning ability is not cultivated within a day, the key depends on the joint efforts, mutual cooperation and trust of teachers and students, teachers adopt flexible teaching methods, with the aid of formative assessment system to promote students to autonomously adjust, improve and continuously improve, by arousing students' interest in learning to mobilize students' initiative and enthusiasm and make students become autonomous learners eventually(Cowan, 1999; Black et al., 2006).
3.0 Criticism of formative assessment towards autonomous learning 形成性评价对自主学习的批判
It is deduced from the above analysis that formative assessment has many positive effects on students' autonomous learning, but formative assessment is more complicated, time-consuming and has higher professional requirements for teachers and students than summative assessment (Nicol and Dick, 2006). Therefore, there are many problems in the specific process of operation of formative assessment, including how teachers 'feedback can really improve students' learning performance (Dweck, 1999), with heavy burden, how teachers complete the task of formative assessment (Nicol and Dick, 2006), teachers fail to carry out formative assessment on students’ extra-curricular autonomous learning and so on (Boud, 2000). These problems also exist in the formative assessment process of high school teaching in China, and these problems may be more serious in China, and because of the particularity of Chinese culture, there are other problems in the formation assessment of Chinese high school education.
3.1 Too many students in a class
There are a small number of students in a class in foreign countries, thus teachers can have a relatively sufficient time to complete assessment, and the current situation in China's high schools is that there are generally about 40-80 students in a class (Zou and Zhang, 2013), which leads to that teachers do not have enough energy to complete and implement formative assessment programs in the classrooms, and teachers are more unable to have the energy to carry out an effective formative assessment on students’ extra-curricular autonomous learning (Hwang and Chang, 2011; Zhao, Panhuizen and Veldhuis, 2017).
3.2 The impact of traditional culture
China is a country with a long history, the use of formative assessment in China is still a new thing (Cao, 2012), the traditional culture is a certain obstacle for the promotion of formative assessment in China (Zhao, Panhuizen and Veldhuis, 2017), this obstruction is reflected in the following three levels: the education sector, teachers, and students.
Although the role of formative assessment in promoting autonomous learning is verified, under the pressure of China's huge learning competition, the education authorities, teachers, parents, students are reluctant to take risks to try this change (Gong, 2011). The schools and the education sectors fail to provide enough support for formative assessment for teachers (Luo, 2009). For example, teachers lack the training, which leads to the lack of teachers' ability to use formative assessment; lack of corresponding financial support and performance appraisal system; teachers’ lack of motive power in using formative assessment and so on (Hwang and Chang, 2011; Zou and Zhang, 2013).
Affected by traditional assessment culture, teachers are accustomed to screening and sorting students with summative assessment (Gong, 2011). New assessment modes make teachers unable to know how to implement assessment, they are just based on their own understanding to operate, it inevitably leads to deviation (Hwang and Chang, 2011). For example, some teachers believe that formative assessment is equivalent to the encouragement and recognition for students, and some teachers think that the implementation of group activities is formative assessment (Luo, 2009; Hwang and Chang, 2011). In addition, the lack of formative assessment knowledge makes teachers who are interested in the use of formative assessment difficult to control the relevant means of assessment, such as the establishment and use of portfolio.#p#分页标题#e#
As a result of the impact of the traditional Chinese education mode and traditional culture, students’ self-assessment and consciousness of criticizing is weak, they can not comprehensively and objectively assess themselves and other people, nor do they develop the habit of assessment, in the process of self- assessment and assessment on other people, there is much randomness, which can not truly reflect the performance and status of those assessed, making the assessment results distorted.
3.3 Inadequate quality of feedback
The most important function of formative assessment is to find problems, solve problems by assessment, because of lack of energy, lack of time, lack of responsibility or lack of comprehensive understanding of formative assessment, teachers’ assessment for students are only about scores, grades, or simple good and bad performance, there is a lack of specific, instructive, descriptive or diagnostic assessment in feedback for students (Gong, 2011; Panhuizen and Veldhuis, 2017), nor do the teachers reflect, improve and adjust their teaching according to student performance or assessment, making formative assessment loose the role of instructing students to learn and promoting students' autonomous learning in the teaching process (Luo, 2009; Hwang and Chang, 2011).
4.0 Recommendations 建议
4.1 Reform of assessment system
Summative assessment is the main way of assessment in education in China, the final exam results are often the most important indicator of a student’s performance, and the usual assessment results have less impact on a student's final assessment results, the assessment system used in Chinese high schools is very unfavorable to the extensive use of formative assessment (Cao, 2012). To change this situation requires that the current educational evaluation system should reduce the percentage of final examinations and improve the roles of formative assessment results, attaching importance to assessment on students' learning process and making formative assessment included in student rating assessment, such as the use of portfolio assessment to record students’ growth and learning process. The transformation of assessment system not only makes assessment system more scientific, but also promotes and encourages students to be engaged in more active and active learning.
4.2 Training for teachers
Chinese high schools should promote the improvement of the assessment level of high school teachers through the systematic training for formative assessment to encourage teachers to participate in assessment reform and carry out assessment research. At the same time, they should promote the research and formulation of assessment criteria of the knowledge and skills of the formative assessment to provide the policy basis for high school teachers to master formative assessment knowledge and skills, and for educational institutions to design, develop, implement assessment projects. In foreign countries, the new research on improving the ability of teachers in formative assessment is using formative portfolio assessment to record the data of teachers' formative assessment knowledge and teaching practice. China can also be based on their own national conditions, through the use of formative portfolio assessment records to cultivate teachers' formative assessment ability.
4.3 Improve the quality of feedback
Feedback provided by teachers for students should be related to students’ learning objectives. Teachers should pay attention to the gap between student performance and their learning objectives, and sending the feedback to students. This feedback helps students to understand their current state of study and find the gap between themselves and their learning goals, motivating students to study autonomously (Black et al., 2006). Feedback information plays an important role in promoting students’ learning, but if the feedback provided by teachers is vague, general and non-directional, students have no way to use the feedback information, nor do they know the gap between themselves and the learning goals. For example, some teachers do not pay attention to the correction of student work, they simply judge the right or the wrong, and students do not know where their mistakes are and how to correct, which also dampen students’ enthusiasm of learning new knowledge. The correct approach is that teachers may appropriately mark in students homework to remind students about how to correct.
The time to provide feedback can affect the effectiveness of feedback (Luo, 2009; Gong, 2011). Premature feedback make deprive students of self-thinking, self-improvement opportunities, and students will be dependent on external feedback. Late feedback will reduce student learning efficiency and learning interest. Feedback given at the right time will better stimulate students' interest in learning and improve their learning efficiency (Black and Wiliam, 1998; Ivanic, Clark and Rimmershaw, 2000).
4.4 Improve the acceptance of students for formative assessment
At present, China's high school students do not well accept and understand formative assessment (Zou and Zhang, 2013). Therefore, it is necessary to take appropriate measures to enable students to accept and understand formative assessment. First, formative assessment should be carried out in an equal environment and in the form of dialogue. In traditional Chinese high schools, assessment on students take teachers as the main body, students in the assessment process has no right to speak, they can only be voluntarily accepted assessment, thus they will have resistance emotion towards the assessment (Hwang and Chang, 2011).
In order to allow students to participate in formative evaluation, it should first eliminate students’ fear of failure through establishment of friendly and harmonious relationship between teachers and students to reduce students’ resistance to formative assessment.
Second, to make students have a clear understanding of study goals is the premise for students to participate in formative assessment. Teachers should help students to use their own knowledge and experience to understand teaching objectives set by teachers, and to allow and encourage students to be based on their own learning and teaching objectives provided by teachers to set more reasonable learning objectives.
Finally, in study in traditional Chinese high schools, teachers are those who pass on knowledge, students are those who passively accept knowledge from teachers, which is very negative to improve students' self-reflection, self-assessment and self-monitoring ability, it also makes students fail to adapt to formative assessment (Luo, 2009; Gong, 2011). Thus teachers in teaching process should give more opportunities to students for their self-reflection, self-assessment and self-management, which on the one hand helps students to adapt to formative evaluation, on the other hand, it also helps to improve their autonomy learning ability.
4.5 Use of computer assisted assessment
There are many students in a class in China's high schools and the teachers’ burden in teaching is heavy, and they have less energy to carry out formative assessment on students’ autonomous learning after class (Cao, 2012). However, with the development of Computer Assisted Assessment (CAA), high school teachers can use CAA to conduct formative assessment on students' learning after class (Gong, 2011). When students finish a certain learning content online, teachers and students can easily test the learning contents online. Teachers and students can be based on the tested information to judge the effectiveness of learning to have a timely detection of problems in learning to have a planned, systemic, adjusted learning process and learning strategy to make learning more effective (Zou and Zhang, 2013).
5.0 Conclusion 结论
Learning methods should match with learning assessment methods to achieve the purpose of improving students’ learning performance, enthusiasm and other purposes (Cao, 2012). Currently, to promote autonomous learning has become the consensus of many schools, teachers and students, and the formative assessment is one of assessment methods to match with autonomous learning, formative assessment can contribute to improving students’ autonomous learning ability through stimulating learning motivation, adjusting learning strategy, improving self-monitoring, improving self-efficacy, improving the sense of learning and many other aspects. At present, there are many problems in the application of formative assessment, including the excessive burden of teachers, the negative impact of traditional education and culture, the less high quality of feedback and so on in current high schools in China. The author puts forward a series of solutions for this, including reforming the assessment system for students, paying attention to teacher training, improving the quality of feedback, improving students’ acceptance of formative assessment, as well as the use of CAA to reduce teachers’ burden in teaching and so on.
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