The Influence of Formative Assess-ment on Educational Achievement of the Fourth Grade Students in Science (1382-83)

Formative assessment aims at assessing and evaluating the students' educational achievements, determining their learning weaknesses and strengths, identifying the flaws of teacher training methods and improving learning quality. Therefore, the present paper has studied the relationship between formative assessment and the fourth grade students' learning achievements in science, in Hamadan.
This semi-experimental study was carried out heterogeneous groups using a pretest and a post test with two. The statistical population were all fourth graders in Hamadan, during 1383-84, from which six sample classes (three male classes and three female ones were randomly selected for the experimental group and another six classes were chosen as control group. The instrumentation's (Pretest and Post test) reliability was 0.77 and 0.84, respectively. The data were analyzed by mean and standard deviation, independent sample T-test and one-way ANOVA. The results indicate significant difference (with 0.99% confidence) exists between the control and experimental groups. Thus, it can be concluded that the formative assessment is highly influential on the students' educational achievement. Moreover, the experimental groups that underwent constant observation and written tests with verbal and written feedback showed higher mean scores compared to the intact control groups.