ABSTRACT
It is helpful to consider why certain aspects of school curricula appear to be more important than other areas and to ascertain the features of the education system that inform these apparent differentiations. If we accept the proposal that schools and school curricula are socially constructed phenomena (e.g. Goodson, 1997), we will be comfortable with the idea that differences in the value of subjects and subject matter are not inherent, but rather outcomes of the curriculum contestations of stakeholders whose value-laden contributions are informed by particular principled positions regarding the formation of the ideal citizen (Hunter, 1994). The value-laden distinctions between certain elements of the general curriculum and within a specific subject curriculum that arise from this contestation need to be communicated to the system in order for their realisation across the system. However, it is clear that the system supports other forms of value-based differentiations. Consider, for example, the distinctions that are made between high-achieving schools and low-achieving schools in the generation of school league tables, and between students in senior secondary contexts for the purposes of selection into post-schooling avenues. Assessment is an important site and mechanism for the generation, communication and application of these valued differentiations. Failing to recognise that assessment, intentionally or otherwise, is a communicative technology can render one reasonably ambivalent to the contribution that it makes to the transfer of these values, and the content and effects of the discourses that assessment specifically communicates. With this in mind, in this chapter we build on the theoretical foundations provided in Chapter 2 to discuss how assessment operates as a communication system. To do so, we continue to draw on the work of Basil Bernstein and elaborate on his notion of the message systems of education.
