ABSTRACT
Formative assessment as a part of good teaching has been around for a long time. In the past two decades, however, formal theory about this type of assessment—used to further students’ developing understandings and to engage students in taking responsibility for their own learning—was developed in other countries (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Cowie & Bell, 1999; Sadler, 1989), in part to counter the negative effects of external accountability tests exported by the United States. Recently, this robust and well-researched knowledge base has made its way back across the oceans, offering great promise for shifting classroom practices toward a culture of learning (Shepard, 2000; Stiggins, 2002).
