Preparing primary and early childhood initial teacher education students to use assessment in teaching

This was a 3-year project that followed a cohort of initial teacher education (ITE) students from four universities over their 3-year programme. The project, “Learning to Become ‘Assessment Capable’ Teachers”, focused on the development of the students’ understandings of, beliefs about, and practices in assessment in primary and early childhood (ECE) settings. The project was intended to be formative by engaging teacher educators responsible for teaching assessment in discussions about their own assessment beliefs, understandings and practice along with findings about their students’ developing assessment capability. In such a way, the ITE assessment curriculum could take account of the current best assessment practices and be responsive to changing national assessment policies and practices.