Building on "Children and their Primary Schools" (an OU set text), this text will encourage educators and researchers in exploring pupil perspectives. Its central argument is that understanding some of the disparity between 'curriculum as intended' and 'curriculum as experienced' will increase the quality of school life and improve learning.

Assessment has become one of the most significant areas of interest in educational policy development, as well as the focus of complex political, economic and cultural expectations for change. Increasingly, governments world-wide have become aware that curricula and teachers can be indirectly controlled through programmes of assessment. Opponents of centralised systems of mass assessment claim they are ill-suited to the diverse and changing needs of learners and users of assessment.
In Assessment the UK and US writers take the reader beyond the obvious functions of assessment, and focus upon the roles it performs in the social structuring of society. They examine the myths and assumptions that underpin assessment and testing and draw attention to its cultural context.
The book provides a wide-ranging, structured and accessible approach to the study of socio-cultural origins and impacts of assessment.

Assessment has become one of the most significant areas of interest in educational policy development, as well as the focus of complex political, economic and cultural expectations for change. Increasingly, governments world-wide have become aware that curricula and teachers can be indirectly controlled through programmes of assessment. Opponents of centralised systems of mass assessment claim they are ill-suited to the diverse and changing needs of learners and users of assessment.
In Assessment the UK and US writers take the reader beyond the obvious functions of assessment, and focus upon the roles it performs in the social structuring of society. They examine the myths and assumptions that underpin assessment and testing and draw attention to its cultural context.
The book provides a wide-ranging, structured and accessible approach to the study of socio-cultural origins and impacts of assessment.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203465849

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Defining assessment in the widest possible way, this work is a comprehensive ethnographic study of assessment. The case studies cover most of the important questions concerning assessment: who is being assessed and who is doing the assessing? what is being assessed and when and where is the assessment taking place? how does assessment function and how are asssesment findings interpreted? The findings have major implications for education practice and policy. It shows how supposedly objective assessment procedures depend on their contexts and are vulnerable to both bias and distortion. The study provides the definitive examination of assessment in the 5-11 ranges.