ElmCore Journal of Educational Psychology October, 2014 | Page 35

Science-Fellows®
that professional development of teachers would need
to focus on developing a community of understanding
about progress, teaching, and curriculum. Perhaps
most importantly, policy needs to continue to make it
safe for teachers and schools to discover bad news
about their own work. This means avoiding highstakes public consequences for assessments; unless
teachers are allowed to identify who is not learning
and respond to that information early enough without
risk of undue shame or blame then assessment for
learning will be a highly desirable soft policy ignored
in favor of the hard policy of accountability (Kennedy,
Chan, & Fok, 2011).
Assessment policy needs to ensure
assessment is about improving learning for each and
every student, even while it is also used to help make
schools more effective. Losing sight of improving
individual students by their own teachers would be
retrograde. There is much that is good in the current
assessment policy in New Zealand, but current
directions and pressures are likely to fail students,
families, and educators. An updated assessment policy
along the lines suggested here is certainly needed.

References
Ajzen, I. (2005). Attitudes, personality and behavior
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Bennett, R. E. (2011). Formative assessment: A
critical review. Assessment in Education:
Principles, Policy & Practice, 18(1), 525. doi:10.1080/0969594X.2010.513678
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (2006). Developing a theory
of formative assessment. In J. Gardner
(Ed.), Assessment and learning (pp. 81100). London: Sage.
Bloom, B., S., Madaus, G. F., & Hastings, J. T.
(1981). Evaluation to improve learning.
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Brennan, R. L. (1996). Generalizability of
performance assessments. In G. W.
Phillips (Ed.), Technical issues in largescale performance assessment (NCES 96802) (pp. 19-58). Washington, DC:
National Center for Education Statistics.

ElmCore® Journal of Educational Psychology

Brown, G. T. L. (2001). Reporting Assessment
Information to Teachers: Report of
Project asTTle Outputs Design. asTTle
Tech. Rep. #15. Auckland, NZ:
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Brown, G. T. L. (2001-2003). Teachers' conceptions
of assessment (TCoA) inventory (Versions
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Brown, G. T. L. (2004). Teachers' conceptions of
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Brown, G. T. L. (2008). Conceptions of assessment:
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