ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to examine the potential of ‘formative assessment’ to promote learning in geography classrooms (Torrance and Pryor 1998). Written by a geographer and for geography educationists, the chapter nevertheless necessarily engages in discussion at a general and often system-wide level. There is a need to experiment with sustained effort in order to translate the general principles discussed here into effective day-to-day classroom practice. The chapter is written in the profound belief that such effort will be richly rewarded, but (to re-emphasise the point) pupils as well as teachers will be at different ‘starting points’ depending on the range of theoretical debate and developments in practice characterising particular system contexts.
