•Formative and summative assessments are not mutually exclusive.•Final-year BEd students value the learning potential of student-generated test materials.•Student generation of test materials enhances motivation for learning.•Student generation of test materials supports learning for the summative evaluation.This paper aims to investigate students’ perspectives on the interplay between the formative and summative functions of assessment. More specifically, it explores whether their learning can be supported by a classroom activity informed by a formative strategy (i.e., student generation of test materials) in a teacher education programme. Research methods included focus-group interviews, classroom observations, student reflective journals, and text analysis of student-generated test papers, and tutor feedback to these papers. Findings indicated that the formative strategy was generally well-received as a practice to support learning for the summative evaluation, despite concerns about the overall quality of some mock papers. Implications for building a positive link between formative and summative assessment and promoting dialogic feedback processes in wider higher education classroom contexts are discussed.