This article focuses on the tensions between national and international testing, educational policy and professionalism for middle school English teachers. I argue that state and federal government(s) are responding to the impact of Australia's falling results on the international testing in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment)…

The intention of this article is to illustrate how assessment is an "emotional practice" (Hargreaves, 1998) for teachers and how paying attention to the emotions involved can provide useful information about assessment practices to teachers, teacher-educators and policy-reformers. Through presenting a review of research literature it makes three…

This article looks at the controversial starting of testing, its boycott, the subsequent years of protest and, in October 2008, the apparent end of key stage examining in England. It considers a possible alternative to the tests based on a project carried out at King's College London based on portfolio assessment.

In an educational context, local, ecologically valid tests can reflect the use of literacy and thinking tools. These tests present a challenge to central, content-focused, high-stakes testing, and to transmission approaches to teaching. They require teachers to accept knowledge as a verb, and to design assessment protocols that reflect…

This article narrates and interrogates some of the responses of a group of English teachers, and their lecturer, to an assignment in a post-graduate course entitled Language and assessment. The assignment required the teachers to respond to a text in a mode other than writing, and to design the assessment of this representation. Three of their…