Even though many nations include gifted and talented (G&T) students within their inclusion policies these students’ particular needs are frequently neglected or ignored owing to prevailing perceptions that they will thrive regardless of the classroom or school environment. We explore definitions of fairness and equity and common identifying characteristics of G&T students. As an extension ...

In this article assessment conceptualised as social practice is explored to address issues related to fairness and equity. How teachers develop fair assessment practice by engaging in collaborative enquiry with researchers, parents, students, and Aboriginal education workers is presented. The research findings on which this article is based derive from an evaluation of an Indigenous ...

Hong Kong is a predominantly Chinese society but just over 6 percent of the population is made up of ethnic minorities. This composition flows into schools where teachers in selected schools need to cater for a diverse school population. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether assessment environments in Hong Kong ...

Meritocracy embodies tension(s) between its egalitarian and elitist strands, which in turn construct how “fairness” is construed in terms of educational opportunity and outcome. In this article, two conflicting notions of fairness are identified, and the dialectic tension and relationship(s) between each are explored. Assessment practices in schools, in particular those pertaining to notions of ...

This special issue of Assessment Matters presents the findings from an extensive, multi-year, multi-site investigation of how initial teacher education students develop the skills, knowledge, attitudes, and dispositions to become competent assessors of student progress. The project, “Learning to Become ‘Assessment Capable’ Teachers”, was conducted at four universities in New Zealand and looked at the ...

This was a 3-year project that followed a cohort of initial teacher education (ITE) students from four universities over their 3-year programme. The project, “Learning to Become ‘Assessment Capable’ Teachers”, focused on the development of the students’ understandings of, beliefs about, and practices in assessment in primary and early childhood (ECE) settings. The project was ...

This article examines conceptions of assessment in early childhood initial teacher education (ITE) students’ learning and relative to assessment policy and practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. Dominant conceptions of assessment were identified in participants’ discussions about their own assessment learning in ITE. These were then compared with students’ beliefs about assessment and descriptions of assessment practices ...

This study examined how students’ beliefs about assessment changed over the 3 years of a primary teacher education programme in which assessment is taught in an embedded fashion as compared to a dedicated assessment course. Data were taken from Likert-type items from the “Beliefs About Assessment” questionnaire (see Hill, Cowie, Gilmore, & Smith, 2010), three ...

Teacher assessment is now understood as central to curriculum reform and a key factor in responsive pedagogy. This article discusses one aspect of a 3-year investigation into the development of student teacher assessment capability. In the full study, data were collected through questionnaires and focus groups. This article reports on the assessment-learning trajectory of three ...

As teachers in initial teacher education (ITE), we need to understand the influence of our teacher education curriculum on ITE student learning. Participating in the “Learning to Become ‘Assessment Capable’ Teachers” project provided us with the opportunity to investigate the extent to which the assessment learning of one cohort of ITE students was aligned with ...