Formative assessment is also referred to as what type of assessment?

Formative assessment is often referred to as educative assessment because it is designed to provide feedback to both instructors and students to enhance the learning process. This type of assessment is ongoing and takes place during the learning experience, allowing educators to adjust their teaching strategies in response to students' needs. The primary goal is to understand how well students are grasping the material, which facilitates a deeper engagement with the learning content.

While other forms of assessment like standardized, summative, and diagnostic are valuable in their own right, they do not align as closely with the continuous, adaptive nature of formative assessment. For instance, standardized assessments are typically one-time evaluations that compare students against a common standard, whereas summative assessments occur at the end of an instructional period and measure what students have learned overall. Diagnostic assessments are used to identify specific areas of need prior to instruction but do not reflect ongoing learning and adjustment during the educational process. In contrast, educative assessment emphasizes the developmental aspect of learning, making it the most accurate descriptor for formative assessment.