Abstract:

A formative evaluation is any evaluation that provides useful information regarding a student's current state of knowledge and skills. Especially useful in the sense that they know what their current level is and what they need to know in order to learn something else. For formative evaluation, it isn't possible to end with the distinction offered by classifications, but it is necessary to inform pupils about what they've learned, what they haven't yet learned and how to continue learning. The main argument for using formative evaluation is that pupils achieve better results, improve the working climate in the classroom and learn to accept evaluation as a natural part of life.

The aim of this paper is to find out how teachers use formative evaluation in teaching, to describe the strategies they choose to implement formative evaluation in teaching, and to identify the pros and cons they attribute to formative assessment. As it is a more extensive research project, only selected data from the qualitative part of the research are presented. A semi-structured interview was chosen as the main research method. The research group consists of six primary school teachers. The obtained data are processed using the anchored theory method.

The results show that formative evaluation is used quite often in Czech schools at the first grades, it is taken as something natural. As the main cause, teachers mention relevant feedback that can inspire and motivate pupils to further learning, as it is not merely a descriptive expression of performance evaluation as in classification. It is a paradox that, although teachers use formative evaluation, in many cases they don't know that they're applying this type of evaluation in practice.

Keywords:

Evaluation, formative evaluation, school evaluation, evaluation types, primary education.