Formative assessment at the intersection of principles, practice and perceptions

English: Previous assessment research has focused on teacher assessment practice, or general understandings of what constitutes effective feedback. Furthermore, much of this research has been carried out in L1 contexts. This study is a contribution to research on formative assessment in written English as an L2 in Norway. In this study, I have explored possible challenges of formative assessment by studying feedback provided by seven teachers to a student text, and their thoughts on why they chose to comment as they did. In addition, a focus group was conducted with four students at grade VG1 in upper secondary, to elicit their perceptions of feedback practices and preferences. The analysis of the teacher comments shows a strong tendency to provide feedback directed at local text levels, though the level of specificity among the different teachers was varied. Some teachers cited a lack of contextual clues as problematic when assessing, and felt that information about the student was necessary to assess the text. The focus group students did not have a clear preference of comment types, though they stated that they wanted “specific comments that made them think”. This lack of strong preferences was likely due to their perception of the assessment practices at their school, as the students were often left feeling insecure of how they were performing. These two perspectives, the teacher comments and student perceptions, have contributed to a wider discussion in this thesis, namely what the possible problems of formative assessment are. I discuss the problematic relationship between formative and summative assessment, and the notion that the psychometric concepts of validity and reliability are applicable to the purpose and use of formative assessment