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Hot Research Assessment For Learning
Assessment for Learning (AfL) — sometimes called formative assessment — is the practice of using evidence of pupil thinking to make the next teaching decision. It's become one of the most researched, most talked-about, and most misinterpreted ideas in UK schools over the last twenty years.
About this video
The core research base comes from Black and Wiliam's influential 1998 review "Assessment and Classroom Learning" and their subsequent development work with the King's College team. Their argument was strong and specific: formative assessment, done well, produces some of the largest effects on pupil learning that education research has found. Not "assessment done more often", but assessment used to change what happens next in teaching.
The idea got picked up quickly, and then, in many schools, distorted. AfL became conflated with peer assessment stickers, "traffic light" self-rating cards, and endless data-collection exercises that had nothing to do with the original research. When Ofsted and school leaders became disillusioned with AfL in the early 2010s, they were often disillusioned with the caricature, not the practice.
The recent literature — including EEF guidance and the Chartered College's syntheses — has moved back toward the original ideas, with more attention to the mechanics: hinge questions, whole-class response systems, worked examples with visible thinking, feedback that specifies next steps. The best modern practice of AfL looks less like a procedure and more like a teacher who is constantly asking "what do these pupils actually think, and what do I do about it?"
What the recent research points to
- Whole-class response beats sample questioning. When you can see every pupil's answer at once (mini-whiteboards, exit tickets, ABCD cards), you get diagnostic evidence you can act on. Hand-raising gives you the answers of the confident few.
- Hinge questions matter. A well-designed multiple-choice question at a key point in a lesson can tell you in 30 seconds whether pupils have grasped a concept or need to revisit it.
- Feedback that specifies next steps. Effective feedback tells the pupil what to do differently, not just what was wrong. The teacher's job is to design the response, not just mark the answer.
- Peer and self-assessment need scaffolding. Pupils can't assess against criteria they don't understand. Time invested in shared success criteria pays back through the assessment quality.
Discussion prompts
- When you use formative assessment in a lesson, does the evidence actually change what you do next — or is it collected and then set aside?
- What's the difference between "assessment for learning" and "collecting more data"? Where does your school sit on that line?
- How do you handle pupils who guess or copy on whole-class response tasks? What has worked for you?
Try this in your classroom
- For your next lesson, plan one hinge question — a multiple-choice question where the wrong answers each reveal a different misconception. Use it. Reteach or move on based on the class's answers.
- Try using mini-whiteboards for one week of lessons for at least one all-pupil-response moment per lesson. Note what you now know about pupil thinking that you didn't before.
- Take a piece of your recent written feedback and rewrite it as "next actions" the pupil must complete. Notice what changes in what they then do.