Synopsis

The author argues that Formative assessments should ensure that the training process is more students
focused than teacher focused. Despite their incorporation in the post secondary and training education,
these still do not work properly. This is for the reason that there is a narrow interpretation of the
criteria and compliance mechanisms for award and achievement. The paper provides that students
training should be more focused on trying to help the student learn hence making students more
dependent on themselves and not their tutors. There are various ways to ensure that this happens and
the first is to ensure that there is clarity in the assessment criteria. This would not only ensure that
there is individual excellence but also institutional achievements. The assessment criteria should thus
be transparent. The next is to ensure that students are able to learn via practical means and this can be
done via activities such as drafting. To be considered good tutors in this, tutors have to provide the
necessary feedback at the same rate of efficiency that they deal with the workload. Thus, it is
necessary for the teachers to learn to teach past the modularization. The most effective way includes
learning by adults and which have been proven is drafting of assignments by learners, read it to them
and giving comments thereof.

However, it is noteworthy from a personal comprehension of the authors stand point that the results
may not always be the same. They may vary considerably depending on the parties who are being
subjected to these processes. Training in colleges is more practical than in secondary education hence
making it more effective. In order to ensure that the training process is effective, records by the
learners of the activities they are engaged in are very important to be kept. Transparency in the kind of
support that learners get should be transparent in the sense that testing should not be a basis for
considering whether a learner has learnt. Assessment should focus on whether the learner has learnt.
Learning should thus not be an issue of getting and accumulating knowledge but should be a social
and practicable means of life.

In reading the article there is relevant information would need. First is to comprehend the systems of
learning that exist today and their nature thereof. Most systems of learning have been crafted in such a
way that the classroom setting is made for cramming purposes rather than practical learning. Second
is that a reader should understand the various abbreviations used in the article such as ESRC and
TLRP?
 References

Harry Torrance (2007) Assessment as learning? How the use of explicit

learning objectives, assessment criteria and feedback in postsecondary education and training can

come to dominate learning. , Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 14:3, 281-294,

DOI: 10.1080/09695940701591867