Formative and Summative Assessment and the Notion of Constructive Alignment

The literature suggests that students have varying expectations in tutorial sessions and their active participation is often challenging for academic teachers. Many academics resort to giving marks for attendance to motivate students to attend classes, but unfortunately, this practice does not guarantee active participation on the part of students. As the literature suggests, unless participation in tutorial activities forms part of graded assessment, it is often difficult to engage students in these activities.

This research was designed to investigate the type of activities that would encourage students to actively take part in the learning process and allow them to demonstrate through formative assessment the depth of their engagement with the content. The research takes as problematic different perceptions of first year accounting students about tutorial activities and their engagements in formative assessment. Specifically, the study asks the question: Does assessment drive learning? This question was particularly useful to the development of the second author, an early career academic, whose goal was to provide quality student learning outcomes. Biggs (2003) explains that to achieve such, intended learning outcomes, teaching and learning strategies and assessment must constructively align. But how can a tutor achieve this if the curriculum and assessment have been 'pre-fabricated' elsewhere? Tutors at the University where the research took place normally have no input in the decision-making process pertaining to the design of curriculum and assessment. Tutors were often constrained by the syllabus provided which mostly involved going through textbook-based questions. They can, however, use ungraded formative assessment in tutorials. But, as many academics have already recognized, the problem of the lack of student participation in tutorials (Keddie & Trotter, 1998; Ramsden, 2003), brings into question whether or not the students would engage in classroom activities and formative assessment. Moreover, would the students' perceptions of accounting influence the way they interact in the classroom and, in particular, their participation in formative assessment?

The paper commences with a discussion of teaching approaches in first year accounting subjects that focus mostly on fundamental accounting concepts, such as debits and credits. It argues that these teaching approaches lack appropriate grounding to allow students to appreciate key attributes needed in the workplace, e.g. communication and problem-solving skills, critical-thinking abilities, interpersonal skills, ethical behavior, open-mindedness and independence (Herring & Izard, 1992). The paper then discusses innovative action-oriented learning activities that enabled the first-year accounting students at one campus to actively take part in ungraded formative assessment. However, as the research findings indicate, there is a misalignment between classroom assessment of the student sample group and their final examination, which forms part of the summative assessment.

Thus, we also discuss the impact of centralized decision-making on curriculum issues, arguing that when teaching staff are detached from the decision-making process, their personal educational goals are difficult to achieve, regardless of the passion they might possess for the discipline. The paper also highlights policy constraints when attempting to build constructive alignment (Biggs, 2003), i.e. aligning curriculum objectives, teaching and learning activities and assessment tasks. It argues that centralized decision-making practices pose some difficulties in measuring the quality of student learning outcomes.

مواضيع ذات صلة

Results, analysis and discussions Facilitating active-learning through formative assessment in a collaborative learning environment

Research methodology

Students perceptions of accounting

Literature review Pedagogical practices in accounting education

Concluding remarks

Alignment of curriculum, teaching and assessment

Assessment protocols

Managing the learning process

Teaching methods

Learning methods

Teaching protocols

Recasting the curriculum