Part V: Preface – Planning and Assessment: Teachers and Students As Central Actors

Abstract

Part V of this volume offers the reader six chapters dedicated to the theme of “Planning and assessment.” While five of the six chapter titles suggest a greater emphasis on the assessment aspect, consideration is also given to planning in all chapters. Current perspectives on assessment view the planning for effective learning and for the kind of assessment that will be used to provide feedback related to that learning as being closely intertwined (Black and Wiliam 1998). One way of thinking about planning and assessing is that of two points on a continuum, points that can be overlapping or even far apart, depending on one’s particular focus at the moment. Yet another way of interpreting the planning-assessing continuum is from the actor’s point of view, that is, according to whether the center of interest is the teacher or the learner or both. The recently coined phrase, assessment as learning (OME 2010)—wherein students monitor and assess their own learning—highlights the attention being given to students within the planning-assessing process, an attention that is reflected in the chapters herein.