 Benjamin Bloom took up the term in 1968 in the book "Learning for Mastery" to consider formative assessment as a tool for improving the teaching-learning process for students.His subsequent 1971 book "Handbook of Formative and Summative Evaluation", written with Thomas Hasting and George Madaus, showed how formative assessments could be linked to instructional units in a variety of content areas.It is this approach that reflects the generally accepted meaning of the term today.