Assessment 

TLRP’s main aim to work to improve outcomes for all learners in all contexts raises questions about how the wide range of valued outcomes might be appropriately assessed in ways that contribute to effective learning and teaching processes. TLRP’s pedagogic principle 5 states that assessment needs to be congruent with learning.

Some of the key challenges for TLRP projects were expressed in a special issue of The Curriculum Journal (link) on learning outcomes published in 2005 (link to) Challenges relating to construct definition and the creation and implementation of valid  assessment procedures have been explored further in a thematic seminar series entitled, Assessment of Significant Learning Outcomes. This thematic initiative has examined the issues in a selection of different contexts (schools, vocational education, higher education and workplace learning). It has also linked the work of TLRP to that of the Assessment Reform Group with which it shares some membership. For both groups the tensions between formative and summative purposes of assessment have been a concern.

Assessment is a cross-programme issue and all projects engage with it in some way. Many note the constraining effect of reductive assessment systems and the importance of positive experiences of assessment for the development of learner identities. This is a dominant theme in the work of Pollard and Filer, Rainbird and colleagues (link to ) and Williams and colleagues..

Among schools projects, a number have investigated assessment as a central focus. Millar and colleagues have researched the benefits of diagnostic questions. They have also influenced the development of the new 21st Century Science GCSE which melds content and assessment in a coherent way.  James and colleagues have investigated the problems and possibilities of expanding and scaling up assessment for learning practices for the purpose of promoting learning to learn within and across schools. And Leitch and colleagues have researched the legal, moral and practical implications of consulting pupils on the assessment of their learning.

Publications related to the general theme of assessment are listed below: