International Teacher Judgement Practices

Human judgements underlie all assessments regarding the quality of students' understandings, and such judgements are conceptually complex and elusive. The study of the complexity of the judgement process is in its infancy but clearly warrants further critical investigation. However, what is demonstrated from the wide variety of international teacher judgement practices presented in this volume is that teacher judgement requires a lot more than a set of standards, criteria and annotated examples. Understandings of assessment theory by pre-service teachers through to more experienced teachers, and opportunities for all to critically reflect and consider their judgements of student work, are vital. Teachers are struggling to maintain their interpretive freedom at the local, professional level in contexts where central policies promote standardisation or 'regulation' of judgement practice, for accountability purposes. This book was originally published as a special issue of Assessment in Education: principles, policy & practice.

Val Klenowski is Professor of Education at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. Her research interests and publications are in the fields of curriculum change, evaluation, assessment and learning. She has international recognition for her work on standards and moderation, classroom assessment, portfolio use for learning and assessment, equity and assessment. She is the author of Assessment for Education: Standards, Judgement and Moderation (with Claire Wyatt-Smith, 2013).

1. Investigating the complexity of judgement practice 2. Assuring academic achievement standards: from moderation to calibration 3. Teachers' professional judgement in assessment: a cognitive act and a socially situated practice 4. Explicit, latent and meta-criteria: types of criteria at play in professional judgement practice 5. 'Exactly what do you mean by consistency?' Exploring concepts of consistency and standards in Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland 6. The use of teacher judgement for summative assessment in the USA 7. The development of teacher assessment identity through participation in online moderation 8. Establishing a foundation for valid teacher judgement on student learning: the role of pre-service assessment education 9. Criteria, comparison and past experiences: how do teachers make judgements when marking coursework?