ABSTRACT

Assessment practices are usually categorised as: Assessment of learning, which is summative; a ‘snapshot’, used to establish what a child is now able to do following an activity or at the end of a phase of education, or Assessment for learning (Black et al., 2002), an on-going process to inform where children are in their learning, and which is used to inform future planning and provision. Hargreaves (2003) proposes instead a continuum of assessment, which is dependent on our image of children as learners. At one end of the spectrum learning is viewed as involving an external body of knowledge to be gained, while at the other end knowledge is believed to be co-constructed with the learner. It is the latter approach that will be considered in this chapter in more detail.