In a context of increasing demand for quality and equity in education to meet economic and social challenges, many countries now see assessment and evaluation as playing a central strategic role in developing education policy. There is an increasing focus on measuring pupil outcomes and comparisons between schools and regions and over time;  many countries now publish a national curriculum, embracing 21^st century learning theories, and set associated progressive performance ‘standards’ (or ‘levels’) for what pupils should know and be able to do at different stages in their learning. National assessments are used to determine the extent to which students are progressing and meeting these standards, and how they can be supported to improve outcomes. They are also used as part of system evaluation to identify where schools are performing well and where they may need to improve, and to hold policy makers, school leaders and teachers accountable (OECD 2013).

As a result, there is a rapidly developing need to educate teachers in effectively using assessments to support student learning, and also to provide dependable summative assessments for use in institutional self-evaluation, and in national system monitoring, which increasingly embraces school accountability (Johnson 2016).

In principle, teacher assessment has an important role to play in increasing assessment validity, by complementing testing to cover subject domains more comprehensively than otherwise would be possible. But the evidence regarding the dependability of teacher assessment is limited and often ambiguous. Research has revealed that teachers can be influenced by a number of construct-irrelevant factors as they work towards their judgements that risk biasing those judgements (Baird, 2010; DeLuca and Klinger, 2010). Moreover, when considering construct-relevant achievement evidence, teachers are often expected to use verbal or semi-verbal sets of criteria, such as level descriptions, which typically require a greater or lesser degree of subjective interpretation in application and so are themselves a source of unwanted variation in judging standards. Arguably the most effective strategy for addressing these issues is participation in consensus moderation. Yet there have been few attempts to provide evidence of the effectiveness of moderation in practice (Johnson 2013).

Assessment, however, has historically been a neglected area in teacher education programmes around the world, and it continues to occupy a minor part in teacher education to this day, even when masters degrees are becoming the new qualification requirement for the teaching profession at all levels in many countries. Moreover, current teacher education structures and processes maintain several challenges for supporting teachers’ developing conceptions and practices of assessment.

The symposium overviews some current research on assessment education, focusing on innovative and effective approaches to educating teachers and teachers-in-training about assessment. The important matter of retention and extension of initial assessment learning into teaching careers is also considered. Among the specific issues addressed are:

 -  Challenges and dilemmas in assessment education, including pre-service practices

and programme structures

-  Integrating assessment for learning principles across teacher education programmes

-  Innovative and empirically substantiated approaches to assessment education

-  Teacher preparation in areas of summative, formative, and high-stakes assessment

contexts

-  Developing teachers’ ability to question intelligently the quality of assessment

-  Evaluating the effectiveness of assessment education in the short and longer term

Baird, J.A. (2010). Construct-irrelevant variance sometimes has consequential validity. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice ,17, 339–343. DeLuca, C. & D.A. Klinger. (2010). Assessment literacy development: Identifying gaps in teacher candidates’ learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 17, 419–438. Johnson, S. (2013). On the reliability of high-stakes teacher assessment. Research Papers in Education, 28, 91-105. Johnson, S. (2016). National Assessment and Intelligent Accountability. In D. Wyse, L. Hayward & J. Pandya (eds), Handbook of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment, Volume 2, Chapter 53. London: Sage Publications. OECD (2011). Building a high quality teaching profession: Lessons from around the world. Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD. OECD (2013). Synergies for Better Learning: An international perspective on evaluation and assessment. Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.