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Geography students must develop process skills for investigation as well as communication skills to question and discuss their findings. Formative assessment fits well into this learning setting, since its purpose is for teachers to sift student responses in class discussion and activity and make professional judgements about the next steps in learning. Using this exclusive edition, revised by John Butler to align with the recently released Australian Curriculum: Geography, primary and secondary teachers throughout Australia can enrich their geography instruction with assessment for learning while fulfilling national curriculum requirements. Learn More

Inside the Black Box: Design and Digital Technologies attempts to blend what we know about the power of formative assessment with a restatement of the educational purpose of Design and Technologies and Digital Technologies. In today’s increasingly digital world, the need to increase the level of technological literacy in all societies is of international importance, and so this booklet offers advice to teachers on how to interact more effectively with technology students on a day-to-day basis. In this book, the authors detail the results of their research into ways of practising formative assessment in Design and Technologies and Digital Technologies.

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Inside the Black Box of Assessment helps you to develop the quality of your summative assessments, offering easy-to-read advice for teachers on how to implement the key techniques within formative assessment – questioning, feedback and peer/self assessment. Previous booklets in the series have targeted teachers of particular curriculum subjects. However, Inside the Black Box of Assessment is different in that its aim is to help all teachers and schools develop the quality of their own summative assessments. The philosophy of the Black Box booklets is that formative assessment is considerably more than the sum of a series of handy tips and techniques; rather, it is about creating a learning culture within the classroom that enables the student to become an independent and effective learner.

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Assessment for learning has long been recognised as a key factor in raising students' standards of achievement, yet many teachers in Australia still struggle to strike a balance between formative and summative assessments. This revised Australian edition aims to help our nation's educators improve their assessment practice by offering easy-to-read advice on how to implement the key techniques within formative assessment - questioning, feedback, and peer- and self -assessment. The philosophy of the Black Box series is that formative assessment is considerably more than the sum of a series of handy tips and techniques; rather, it is about creating a learning culture within the classroom that enables the student to become independent and effective learners.

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Working Inside the Black Box offers easy-to-read advice for teachers on how to implement the key techniques within formative assessment, such as questioning, feedback, and peer/self assessment. While other works in the Black Box series have been designed to support assessment for learning, Working inside the Black Box takes a more practical slant, offering practical ideas and advice for the improvement of classroom assessment through the key formative assessment methods. The philosophy of the Black Box series is that formative assessment is considerably more than the sum of a series of handy tips and techniques; rather, it is about creating a learning culture within the classroom that enables the student to become an independent and effective learner.

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Science provides the means by which learners can interact with the world around them and develop ideas about the phenomena they experience. To be able to learn science in this way, students need help in developing process skills to investigate, and communication skills to question and discuss findings. The specific aim of Inside the Black Box: Science is the improvement of science education, so ideas are put in the context of the aims and expectations of science teaching. The book sets out in detail the research findings on four main ways of practising formative assessment found to be both workable and productive with teachers of science, and it shows teachers how to develop formative work within a science faculty in a school.

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Inside the Black Box: Foreign Languages offers advice to foreign languages teachers on developing assessment practices that improve learning, backed by rigorous evidence that the assessment for learning method is effective and feasible in real classrooms. Formative assessment fits naturally into the foreign languages setting since teachers can collect and sift data that arises in classroom interactions and activities, so that professional judgements can be made about the next steps in learning. Inside the Black Box presents the principles that underlie effective learning and teaching in languages before outlining practical ways of implementing formative assessment in the languages classroom, going on to demonstrate how formative assessment can be developed within a languages department.

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This revised Australian edition of Inside the Black Box: Primary Years is an up-to-date guide to assessment for learning focused on helping Australian primary teachers to acquire and develop effective assessment practice. The booklet offers guidance on how to develop a community of learning that builds on collaborative practice between children, offering recommendations grounded in both research findings and in the authors’ experience of working with many teachers, schools and local authorities over the last decade.

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Inside the Black Box: Maths outlines the principles of formative assessment and how they can be applied in the maths classroom. The recommendations made in Inside the Black Box: Maths gain particular strength from the fact that they are grounded in the main findings of many decades of research into the principles that govern effective learning and the factors that help support the motivation and self-esteem of learners. This research is put into the context of the aims and expectations of mathematics teaching, and the authors outline their findings on ways of practising formative assessment that have been found to be both workable and productive with mathematics teachers, including classroom dialogue, feedback and marking, and peer- and self-assessment.

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In the ever-evolving climate of ICT education, formative assessment practices have an essential role to play, since their purpose is to enable teachers to sift the rich data that arise in class discussion and activity so that professional judgements can be made about the next steps in learning. In this book, the authors offer advice to ICT teachers on how to use formative assessment to interact more effectively with students and promote learning. They set out in detail four main ways of practising formative assessment in an ICT setting, outlining assessment techniques that encourage learners to bring their ideas to the fore. Using these methods, teachers can gauge what students already know, while assessing learners’ analytical skills and how they approach a design task.

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This revised Australian edition of English inside the Black Box offers an opportunity to reconsider established teaching strategies such as classroom dialogue and peer- and self-assessment in the light of the research findings on formative assessment, and to use them more rigorously and consistently as a means of helping students to progress. The booklet examines the principles of learning that underpin formative assessment and goes on to consider how these might be applied in the classroom, identifying the aspects of formative assessment that research has shown to be important in raising student achievement in the English classroom. Learn More

Teacher quality is the most significant variable in school improvement, and of all the things teachers can do to improve the quality of their teaching, formative assessment has been shown to provide the greatest impact. In Content, Then Process: Teacher Learning Communities in the Service of Formative Assessment (from the 2009 Annual Conference on Standards and Assessment in Las Vegas, Nevada), Dr Wiliam outlines a model to shift towards more formative assessment–based teaching practices by first addressing content (what needs to be changed) and then addressing the process to approach that change.

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