Teacher Assessment: social process and social product

abstract The advent of the Education Reform Act entailed the introduction into schools in England and Wales of two new forms of assessment, Standard Assessment Tasks and Teacher Assessment. The Conservative government has consistently made claims for the objectivity and comparability of teacher assessment as an achievable aim. There exists, however, within the literature of the sociology of assessment, a body of knowledge which represents a challenge to such claims. This paper reviews the predominant themes in that literature. In addition, it outlines some elements of a recent longitudinal ethnography in a primary school with respect to ways in which pedagogies can be analysed for the purposes of developing these traditional themes in the context of current assessment concerns. The sample consisted of a cohort of some 26 white working‐class children passing through Years 1‐3 of a primary school in the south of England. This paper relates to Year 1, in which the children attained their sixth birthdays.

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