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Module 6 · 15 min read

Feedback & Assessment

The purpose of feedback is not to grade work already done but to make the next piece of work better. That distinction decides where a teacher's largest effort goes.

  • Cambridge framework: Teaching, learning and assessment
  • Turkish MoNE competency area: Professional skills — assessment and evaluation
A learner examines a clay cup while an educator indicates one part of it.
Feedback gives the learner a concrete next step to try. The images in this module are illustrative scenes created with AI.

In this module

  • Separate formative from summative assessment and use each in the right place
  • Decide deliberately when to correct an error
  • Turn the learner into an assessor of their own work

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Watch first: a 6-minute overview

A short video on the module's main ideas. The text below then gives the details and examples.

6 min · narrated in TurkishOpen on YouTube

The video is narrated in Turkish; on YouTube you can turn on subtitles and choose Auto-translate → English. Its charts and minute-by-minute timings are illustrations, not measured data; the module text below is the reference. Time spent watching counts towards reading time.

Two different jobs: measuring and improving

Summative assessment measures where someone is at a point in time: an exam, a placement test, an end-of-term report. Its purpose is a decision.

Formative assessment exists to determine the teacher’s next move. Its purpose is not a decision but a change of direction. The question you ask mid-lesson, the short piece of writing, asking “explain this to me” — all of these are formative assessment.

An assessment is formative if the result is used to change the teaching. If it only goes into a record book, it is summative whatever it is called.
The feedback loop — this programme’s model. The fourth step is the one most often missing: with no occasion to act on what you said, it was not feedback, it was a verdict.

You can read the opening section of the module below.

This module is open to registered educators

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