ABSTRACT
As we have seen, an overall theme of this book is that it is time to rethink what is being done in assessment in higher education in order to foster learning for the longer term. In this chapter I suggest that we not only need to engage in specific assessment reforms, but there should be a major reframing of what assessment exists to do, how it is discussed and the language used to describe it. This requires a central educational idea to which participants in higher education can subscribe: that is, a view of the direction in which the enterprise of assessment should be moving. It is only through establishing a counter-discourse to the one that currently dominates higher education that some of the fundamental problems created by current assessment assumptions and practice can be addressed.
