Assessment of learning in schools, colleges, universities, and in professional and workplace settings, is increasingly being questioned. We are in a period of rapid change and innovation in relation to assessment polices and practice. Critical debate amongst assessment experts and educational researchers has questioned the relevance of dominant policies and practices of assessment. In recent years this has focused on the inadequacies of traditional exams and the failure of mainstream assessment policies and practices dominated by tests, exams, and other forms of summative assessment. The critique has been based on the assumption that these forms of assessment do not support high quality learning associated with ‘deep’ learning, critical thinking, sustainable knowledge, and lifelong learning. In other words, the widely shared everyday view of assessment in the form of exams and tests as a safeguard for the quality of education is brought into question. As Knight and Yorke (2003, p. 15) put it, ‘the everyday trust we put in grades, marks and classes is not shared among experts in assessment’. They refer to Linn’s (2000) thought-provoking statement:

As someone who has spent his entire career doing research, writing and thinking about educational testing and assessment issues, I would like to conclude by summarizing a compelling case showing that the major uses of tests for student and school accountability over the past 50 years have improved education and student learning in dramatic ways. Unfortunately, that is not my conclusion. (p. 14)

The criticism of so-called ‘traditional’ tests and exams cuts across different types of educational institutions, levels of the educational system (primary and secondary schooling, higher education), and academic disciplines and professional programs. Worldwide, researchers, teachers, and institutions across these boundaries are currently searching for new and more learning-oriented assessment structures. Birenbaum (2003, p. 22) describes the emergence of a new assessment culture. There is a move from a ‘con-

servative testing culture’ dominated by the use of a single total score with the ranking of students as its aim, to a ‘contextual-qualitative paradigm’ that emphasizes descriptive profi les aimed at providing multi-dimensional feedback to foster learning.