Where does formative collide?

In education, formative assessment is assessment carried out during instruction whose purpose is to generate feedback that teachers and students use to adjust what happens next, as opposed to summative assessment that certifies learning after the fact. Black and Wiliam's 1998 Assessment and classroom learning reviewed the evidence and argued that strengthening this feedback loop produces substantial learning gains. The referent is assessment-in-progress tied to acting on its results, judged by its effect on subsequent learning, and it is a different construct from an archaeological stage that merely shares the adjective meaning 'forming.'[1]

Unit

The quality of feedback generated during learning and its use to adjust instruction

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Evaluated by classroom studies linking feedback practices to subsequent achievement and by the use teachers and students make of results

In New World archaeology, the Formative is a developmental stage in a culture-historical scheme, marked by settled village life, pottery, and agriculture preceding the later Classic and Postclassic stages. Willey and Phillips's Method and theory in American archaeology set out the stage sequence that made 'Formative' a standard period label across Mesoamerica and the Andes. The referent is a classificatory stage of societal development defined by material-culture traits, assigned from excavated assemblages, and it is unrelated to classroom assessment except for the root meaning of a thing taking shape.[2]

Unit

Placement of a culture in a stage defined by settlement, pottery, and agriculture

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assigned from excavated assemblages, settlement patterns, and chronological sequences dated by stratigraphy and radiocarbon