Assessment Policy Reform

Tina Isaacs, Iasonas Lamprianou

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000546866
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book highlights the impact of policy and politics on assessment across the globe. With contributions from England, the Irish Republic, Northern Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Wales, it explores state-led assessment policies and practices that have been the subject of much debate.

We are experiencing a shift from using assessments — especially national tests — as measurement instruments designed to produce information, to a reliance on tests to influence policy and instruction. Once tests become high stakes — for students, teachers, and schools — even those that might have been reasonable monitors of educational success can lose dependability and credibility. However, not all countries' assessment policies follow the same model and the contributors explore and analyse a range of different national (and supra-national) assessment policy approaches and perspectives. The chapters identify the impetus behind changing assessment policies and practices and analyse ways forward and innovative approaches. Readers can draw their own conclusions about which model(s) can provide the best outcomes for learners – surely the most important part of the equation.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: International assessment policy reform: nothing new under the sun Tina Isaacs and Iasonas Lamprianou
• 1 Is the English Baccalaureate a passport to future success? Emma Armitage and Caroline Lau
• 2 National assessment policy reform 14–16 and its consequences for young people: student views and experiences of GCSE reform in Northern Ireland and Wales Rhian Barrance and Jannette Elwood
• 3 Towards a national assessment policy in Switzerland: areas of conflict in the use of assessment instruments Flavian Imlig and Susanne Ender
• 4 Teacher evaluation as a wicked policy problem Sølvi Lillejord, Eyvind Elstad and Håkon Kavli
• 5 The development of assessment policy in Ireland: a story of junior cycle reform Ann MacPhail, John Halbert and Hal O’Neill
• 6 Ambitious and ambiguous: shifting purposes of national testing in the legitimation of assessment policies in Norway and Sweden (2000–2017) Sverre Tveit
• Index