Schools and their development as sustainable assessment cultures requires insight into the interests and role of different stakeholders: school policy makers, teachers and their teaching teams, principals, parents, pupils and the local community. Researchers are not immediately included in this list, but as external advisers they can play a pivotal role as catalysts or as the advocate for the actions or informed reflections of stakeholders. A stakeholder approach can easily draw support from rational choice theory or the perhaps more fashionable systems approach. In the opening article to this special issue, the authors are less interested in adopting and defending a single theoretical perspective and seek, instead, to highlight and provide an overview of a number of debates and approaches that seek to understand the study and practice of developing sustainable assessment cultures in schools. In the course of this article, the contributions of this special issue will be positioned in what is, in many respects, a global dialogue, where different researchers are keen to draw upon the experience and conceptual resources of colleagues located around the world. (Contains 1 note.)