FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT: IMPROVING TEACHING AND LEARNING BUSINESS EDUCATION IN NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

Assessment is vital to the education process. In schools, the most visible assessments are summative used to measure what students have learnt at the end of a unit, to promote students, to ensure they have met required standards on the way to earning certification for school completion or to enter certain occupations, or as a method for selecting students for entry into further education. But assessment may also serve a formative function. It refers to frequent, interactive assessments of students’ progress and understanding to identify learning needs and adjust teaching appropriately. Teachers using formative assessment approaches and techniques are better prepared to meet diverse students’ needs – through differentiation and adaptation of teaching to raise levels of student achievement and to achieve a greater equity of student outcomes. This paper identifies the principles of formative learning, the strategies to be adopted in formative learning. It shows how formative
assessment promotes the goals of life-long learning, including higher levels of students’ achievement, placing emphasis on the process of teaching and learning in business education, and actively involving students in that process, building students’ skills for peer- and self-assessment, helping students understand their own learning, and developing appropriate strategies for learning. The paper discussed barriers to wider practice of formative assessment and ways in which those barriers can be addressed.

Keywords: Formative Assessment, Teaching and Learning, Business Education.