FORMATIVE AND SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION: OPINIONS AND PRACTICES OF INSTRUCTORS

The purpose of this study is to examine opinions of the instructors working in three different universities in Ankara regarding assessment in education and assessment methods they use in their courses within the summative assessment and formative assessment approaches.  The population is formed by instructors lecturing in School of Physical Education and Sport and Sports Sciences Faculties of three universities (Ankara, Gazi and Hacettepe Universities) located in Ankara in quantitative section of the survey. Its sample is formed of 61 instructors taking part in quantitative section and 27 instructors taking part in qualitative section. The research is a mixed research design including both quantitative and qualitative survey model. A questionnaire form, composed of three sections and developed by the researchers, has been used for qualitative data collection tool in the survey. As quantitative data collection tool, “semi-structured personal interviews” have been conducted. Descriptive statistics is used in the survey for qualitative results in analysis of data and results have been evaluated with frequencies, percentages and means in the tables. And for the quantitative survey, content analysis method has been used for the assessment of the interviews. It is identified according to the results of the survey that the participation percentage of the instructors to the opinions towards the inquiry questions related to assessment were high ( =4,48±0,34). It is determined that the methods most used by the instructors in applied courses are; skill tests (f: 26), performance assessment (f:19) and project (f:10) while in theoretical courses “multiple choice tests” (f: 39), “open ended questions” (f: 35) and “true-false questions” (f:28) were the methods used at most. In the result of qualitative data analysis of the survey, opinions of the instructors regarding assessment are assessed under formative and summative assessment categories. When we examined the opinions of the instructors related to the importance of assessment in education, it is concluded that the formative assessment characteristics as increasing motivation, self-assessment of the instructor, providing a chance to re-arrange the instruction process via feedback have been placed at the top of the list; however, in the implementation the assessments have been made by summative assessment methods rather than formative assessment methods.  Article visualizations: