Accountability

Abstract

Models of curriculum make a clear distinction between those evaluative or assessment-related activities that contribute to learning and those that allow an evaluation or assessment of what is happening or what has happened in relation to education systems, institutions or particular learners. Learning and assessment practices on a programme of study, such as a curriculum, can be regarded as formative if evidence is provided of a learner's achievements in relation to knowledge, skill and dispositional acquisitions, and this evidence is used by the teacher, the individual learner, and their fellow learners, where the intention is to make decisions directly related to their subsequent programme of learning. Thus, assessment is used formatively when it directly influences the learner’s cognition. A learning programme or curriculum consequently needs to have within it a clear distinction between summative and formative assessment. If these two functions are combined, then the curriculum is liable to be distorted. One form that these summative evaluative or assessment processes take is quality assurance mechanisms.