Effect of Formative Assessment on Students’ Achievement in Science

This article describes a quasi experimental study, following the Static Group Posttest Design. It aimed at determining the effect of formative assessment on students’ achievement in science at grade level eight. Two rural schools, one of either gender, were taken to conduct experiment. Two intact classes, one from each of the schools, constituted experimental group and the other two served as control group. Both the groups were comparable on the basis of their scores on Raven Matrices. A teacher, also investigator of this study, employed different techniques and strategies of formative assessment while teaching science to the experimental group. Special emphasis was given to ‘questioning based discourse’ following the initiation, response, follow up (IRF) or IRFRF format. Statistical analysis of the students’ means achievement scores on a posttest showed that the Overall performance of the experimental group was significantly better than that of the control group. The boys and the girls of the experimental group performed higher than those of the control group. The high and the low ability students of the experimental group outperformed the students of the respective abilities in the control group, but no significant difference was found between the medium ability students of both the groups.