ABSTRACT
Policies towards assessment in teacher education are undergoing significant change. There are a number of reasons for this. From an educational perspective the broadening of the concept of assessment in schools has inevitably created a momentum for change in higher education. Advocates for assessment as a formative and diagnostic process, as well as a summation of students' achievement, have been influential in this process (Brown 1989). From a social as well as educational perspective there has also been increasing disillusion, if not distrust, with normative assessment processes. Whilst class lists and ‘concours' may be appropriate when asssessment serves rigorous selective purposes, they sit less well in the world of vocational and professional qualifications. The emphasis now is not how one student compares with another, but rather on whether can they do the job, or meet the criteria required within an occupational grouping (Jessup 1990). Finally, from a political perspective there has, in a number of countries, been an increased concern about the quality of entrants to the teaching profession and, therefore, the means by which students are deemed to achieve qualified status. In England and Wales, for example, teacher education has been a focus of political controversy for a number of years, and assessment procedures have played an important part in government-led reform.
