Formative Assessment

“Formative assessment is the process used by teachers and students to notice, recognize, and respond to student learning in order to enhance that learning, during the learning.”

— Beverly Bell & Bronwen Cowie*
Student Agency

The Challenge

WestEd’s Formative Insights Team supports students, teachers, and school leaders to reframe daily instruction in ways that explicitly teach the skills and mindsets necessary to develop learner agency through formative assessment routines.

Formative assessment empowers educators and students to gather evidence of learning. WestEd’s approach focuses on equity and student agency, ensuring every learner feels valued. Our model fosters inclusive environments where students develop positive identities and share responsibility for learning.

What We Do

Formative Insights champions a transformative shift in educational practices. Our approach emphasizes the importance of embedding formative assessment into daily teaching, encouraging educators to view it as an ongoing, intentional process. This shift not only enhances learning outcomes but also nurtures a supportive culture where all educators, staff, and leaders play a vital role in fostering effective formative assessment practices.

Key Outcomes:

  • Increased attendance
  • Greater student participation and motivation
  • Increased collaborative learning with peers
  • Improved positive learner identities
  • Greater student agency

By focusing on our guiding principles—learning culture, student identity, formative assessment, and student agency—we promote equity across schools and districts, ensuring that every student has the opportunity to thrive in their educational journey.

Professional Learning Services

WestEd’s Formative Insights team leads transformative professional learning experiences with thousands of educators across the nation. We blend learning with coaching and capacity-building to scale formative assessment practices systemwide.

View All Services

Introductory Formative Assessment Institutes

Scaling Teacher Learning

This institute supports teachers and leaders in exploring formative assessment to elicit, interpret, and use evidence to enhance learning and boost student autonomy and motivation.

Formative Assessment for Classroom Teachers (FACT)

Scaling Teacher Learning

This online course provides a wealth of the latest resources that align formative assessment practices with recent research on how students develop foundational skills for learner agency through formative assessment.

Leading for Agency

Building Leadership Capacity

This experience helps leaders build coherence and a supportive network to enhance their practices. Leaders explore roles that foster a positive culture, promote distributed leadership, and build trust, essential for agency and inclusion.

Testimonials

Our students are engaged on a whole different level because when they can speak to success criteria…their exchange is so different. They have exchanges referencing the work, and the thinking process.

— Mary Montano

Resources

The Formative Insights team resources are designed to inform and engage educators, coaches, and leaders in formative assessment practice and learning. Browse our professional learning materials and tools below.

Defining Formative Assessment

Getting Started

Bell and Cowie’s definition of formative assessment as a process of evidence use adopted by WestEd. This resource unpacks their definition and introduces the formative assessment feedback loop.

Building Blocks to Support Learner Agency

Advancing Formative Assessment

Many see learner agency as a fixed characteristic, either students have it or they don’t. This reading defines agency and details metacognition and self-regulation skills that help students strengthen their agency.

A Leadership Framework for Sustaining Formative Assessment

Leading Implementation and Scaling

This brief outlines lessons learned in the ‘How I Know’ project and details five specific characteristics of leaders whose sites had successful and sustained formative assessment implementation.

*Bell, B., & Cowie, B. (2001). The characteristics of formative assessment in science education. Science Education, 85(5), 536–553. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.1022