Lesson observations are used in educational environments worldwide to support professional development and to measure content and quality of curriculum delivery. Within a neoliberal context, lesson observations can arguably be seen as symbolic of the embodied tensions between educational policies that emphasise accountability and the creative, hidden nature of teaching ...

The metaphor of a feedback loop underpinned a significant curriculum change in a first year teacher-education unit. Assessment for Learning (AfL) practices such as discussing examples of previous student work and giving peer feedback were embedded within the curriculum design. The metaphor of a feedback loop connected these AfL practices ...

“Students as co-researchers” is a mode of engagement between students and teachers in school systems that has been likened to a bridge. This article explores the bridge metaphor with reference to one school’s experience of a students as co-researchers project involving students and teachers in the school and a university ...

Proponents of metaphor research argue metaphor is no longer regarded as merely a poetic flourish, but instead forms a part of our regular meaning-making repertoire. This article critically considers the literacy metaphors spontaneously generated by teachers participating in three New Zealand literacy projects. The most prevalent literacy metaphors found rely ...

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 ...