Due to anthropogenic impacts generated by colonial and neocapitalist cultures, the world is now moving on accelerating trajectories toward dystopian futures. Education, traditionally engineered as an instrument of cultural reproduction, now urgently needs to adopt a leadership role for cultural transformation to generate a sustainable future. To…

Integrated STEAM education (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics) has been shown to effectively foster global competencies as well as school and societal engagement for 21st century learners of diverse backgrounds. However, facilitating quality STEAM teaching and learning can be challenging for teachers, particularly in the area…

Science capabilities were introduced within the New Zealand context following the revised "New Zealand Curriculum" (NZC). These capabilities are a small set of things that NZC intends students to be able to do in science, which weave the nature of science with content strands. Using pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) to understand…

In this article, we consider how assessment might reinforce New Zealand curriculum goals of knowing and doing in science for active and informed participation in societies that rely on scientific knowledge to guide decision making. This focus constitutes an orientation towards "sustainable assessment". Sustainable assessment encompasses…

A standards-based assessment system provides opportunities to join curriculum intentions to demonstrations of complex learning. In this article we use New Zealand's senior secondary qualifications system--the National Certificates of Educational Achievement (NCEA)--to illustrate how adaptations of existing structures might help to better reflect…

Designing an assessment that is fit for purpose in the initial teacher education (ITE) setting is complex. The assessment must meet the university and New Zealand Teaching Council regulations, mirror educational best practice, support ITE students to learn curricular and pedagogical content as well as be practicable to teach and assess. This…

This article provides a snapshot of assessment for learning in action. It introduces the drawings made by children who had been studying "Planet Earth and Beyond"--Matariki as a context in science in a New Zealand primary school. The visual data are drawn from the Te Ao Hurihuri project (The Changing World) in which students were offered…

In this case study, we follow the career of one student teacher (Ellen) from her pre-service training to her first year as a mathematics teacher. As part of a research project about what it means to become a mathematics teacher, the aim of the study was to gain insight into the development of formative assessment competence. To accomplish this, we…

The Integrated Quality Assessment (IQA) in China is an officially mandated system that uses student self-assessment in addition to information provided by tests and examinations and other sources to make judgements about student achievement across a range of qualities. Officially, this system of assessment serves two purposes: to help students…

Cognisant of the benefits and shortcomings of peer review in the enhancement of student learning, the current study investigated how Year 12 students engaged in this activity. Specifically, attention has been paid to how 14 secondary school statistics students experienced peer review, their perceptions of the value of feedback, and the conditions…

Building capability in assessment for learning is a goal of education systems internationally, though difficult for nations to successfully implement and sustain over time. Evidence about the positive effects of assessment for learning practices on students' learning and achievement is convincing, but implementation is made difficult by the…

Recognising that assessment literacy is a complex construct comprised of knowledge, skills, and dispositions, the authors sought to better understand how teacher candidates develop assessment literacy by focusing on the dispositional construct of approaches to assessment. Teacher candidates' approaches to classroom assessment were analysed at…

Formative assessment is a crucial aspect of teaching and learning in the classroom, but there is evidence that there has been a lack of effective implementation of formative assessment in practice. In response, this article outlines the design and development of a formative assessment framework that can be implemented as a consistent whole-school…

Secondary schools in New Zealand use assessment data for school self-evaluation, but little research has explored exactly how schools are using these data. This case study of selected high schools explored the perspectives of teachers and school leaders whose schools had recently implemented a student assessment tracking and monitoring…

The project reported in this article focused on evaluating the use of a pre-existing observation schedule to document dimensions of primary teachers' AfL practice with the intent of using this information to enhance teacher assessment capability. Using the voices of the participant teachers, challenges teachers faced were identified when observing…