The Humanities and Social Science 2015/25 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 6 Formative Assessment Practice: Insight into Three Latvian Universities Alla Anohina-Naumeca 1,2 , Anzela Jurane-Bremane 2 1 Riga Technical University, 2 University of Latvia Abstract – Taking into account that formative assessment promotes learning and there is a lack of evaluation data on such type of assessment in Latvian institutions of higher education, at the beginning of 2015 the research was undertaken with the aim of investigating the assessment practice of university lecturers. The questionnaire was used as the main research instrument. The paper presents the analysis of data on three Latvian largest universities: Riga Stradiņš University, Riga Technical University, and University of Latvia. Conclusions are made about assessment purposes, ways of use of assessment information, frequency of grading, feedback types, and other assessment aspects. Keywords – feedback, formative assessment, higher education, questionnaire. I. INTRODUCTION Within the last 17 years since publishing of the study presented in [1], formative assessment became a hot topic in educational debates and research. One of the reasons for such a situation is the development of views that assessment should match the understanding of learning, which nowadays is associated with a constructivist approach to learning [2]. The constructivist approach advocates activities and methods of knowledge assessment which focus on learning and active construction of knowledge. The fact that formative assessment promotes learning is well-established in publications over the last 20 years [3]–[7]. Feedback or information about the current state of students’ learning is an integral part of formative assessment. An activity becomes a formative activity when feedback is used for making adjustments of the study process with the aim of satisfying students’ current learning needs [8]. The learning paradigm of 21st century emphasizes the significance of formative assessment in the teaching–learning process at any educational level, including higher education [9]–[10]. Despite the fact that the United Kingdom is one of the leading countries in the research and practical implementation of formative assessment and there exist a huge number of studies on this type of assessment, several authors emphasize the insufficient integration of formative assessment in the study process of institutions of higher education. Reference [11] indicates that formative assessment almost is not practiced and feedback from lecturers is slow and little meaningful. As a result, university students express great dissatisfaction about feedback [12]. As possible reasons for such a situation some authors mention the dominating position of summative assessment due to the pressure from the governmental institutions, the modularization of study programs in higher education, and promotion of mass education [13]–[16]. In Latvia, research on the university lecturers’ practice of formative assessment has not been conducted so far. The paper presents results of the first such study which was undertaken in February 2015 by offering the teaching staff of all Latvian universities to fill-in a questionnaire about their assessment practice. The results discussed in the paper focus on three Latvian institutions of higher education: Riga Stradiņš University (RSU), Riga Technical University (RTU), and University of Latvia (UL), which are the largest Latvian universities covering the whole spectrum of scientific disciplines – health care (RSU), engineering (RTU), and humanities, sciences, and social sciences (UL). The paper is structured as follows. Section II explains the main concepts of formative assessment. Section III discusses the method and the sample of the research. The analysis of data acquired through the questionnaire together with the discussion of results is presented in Section IV. Conclusions are given at the end of the paper. II. FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT A lot of definitions of formative assessment or assessment for learning are given in literature, for example, [2], [7], [15], [17]–[22]. Their summarization allows defining of formative assessment as a process which can be described by the following attributes [23]:  Purposes: using assessment information for making adjustments in the study process a) to improve students’ learning, b) to increase students’ achievement levels, and c) to increase the quality of the teacher’s work;  Time span: during the ongoing study process;  Participants: student, student group, lecturer;  Implementation forms: any (observations, questions, discussions, projects, homework, etc.);  Integral parts: - obligatory: precisely defined study goals, learning outcomes, and assessment criteria; feedback both to the lecturer and to students; adjustment of the study process through the lecturer’s and/or students’ actions according to feedback; - desired: self-assessment and peer assessment;  Essential characteristics: regular and grade-free.