ABSTRACT
Assessment plays a critical role in education, for both policy makers and practitioners. These roles encompass issues of both accountability (how well students have learned) and instruction (how to promote higher levels of learning). However, assessment can yield more; the potential of assessment for teacher learning, as a result of both designing of student assessments and evaluating of student responses, has been generally overlooked. This paper outlines the uses of assessment of learning (summative assessment), and assessment to guide learning (formative assessment), and then describes the potential for teacher learning in each of these settings. It argues that at each stage in the process of student assessment—design, calibration, analysis of student responses, and use of assessment results to plan future instruction—opportunities abound for teachers to extend their practice.
