Columnists articles

It’s a popular idea – educational assessments are either ‘summative’ assessments of learning or ‘formative’ assessments for learning. But just how fundamental is this distinction? And is it truly useful?

Professor Geoff Masters AO discusses identifying and addressing the needs of individual learners in Australian schools.

Ongoing improvements in educational performance in Australian schools depend on continual improvements in the quality of classroom teaching.

Professor Geoff Masters discusses recent developments in assessing student learning and how they will shape the future of assessment.

Professor Geoff Masters discusses several practices that he would advance are part of the generic ‘essence’ of effective teaching.

Is there a ‘best’ way to establish the levels of knowledge, understanding and skill that students have attained in a subject by the end of Year 12?

A commonly proposed strategy for raising achievement levels in schools is to specify high expectations or ‘standards’ of student performance and to hold students, teachers and schools accountable for achieving those standards. On the surface, it seems like an eminently sensible strategy. But is it?

By the turn of the century, the observation had been made in many countries that substantial increases in expenditure on schools had failed to deliver measurable improvements in student performance. But just how effective are incentives as an improvement strategy?