What role does assessment play in the teaching and learning of Essay

What role does assessment play in the teaching and learning of Mathematics - Essay Example n the universe understands the progress that they have to make in learning and they can only improve on their learning capabilities if they receive the support that they need in this process (DCSF 2008, p. 3). Ideally, many students consider mathematics to be one of the hardest subjects within a learning curriculum hence influencing the need for motivating students to improve on this perceived weak subject. The assessment process, especially on mathematics can be on a daily, transitional or on a periodic basis in which the findings of the assessment may be shared between the students, parents and the teachers (CERI 2008, p. 1). With this, this essay will delve into the roles in which assessment plays in the teaching and learning of mathematics through the formative and summative assessment strategies. Further, the focus of the essay will also be on exploring the relationship between teaching practice, policies and theories while applying views of the various stakeholders in the learning process. Ideally, formative assessment tends to be a variety of assessment tools in which teachers apply within the learning process as a way of improving the results of the students in teachers may have to making changes to their teaching curricula. The most principle aspects in this assessment form is that it makes use of feedback rather than the scores of the students whose main objective is focusing on the course contents and improved performance of the students (Sammons 2009, p. 110). On the other hand, summative assessment refers to the assessment tool in which learners have to sit for tests after a period of time in which the teacher marks the test and gives scores as per the performance of the learners (Kennedy, Tipps & Johnson 2008, p. 105). The basic component in this is that summative assessment tends to summarize the learnt aspects up to the point of testing and does not influence the improvement of the performance of the students. `Learning tends to draw influence