Achievement assessment has undergone a major shift, from what some call a culture of testing' to a culture of assessment'. Nowadays, a strong emphasis is placed on the integration of assessment and instruction, on assessing processes rather than just products, and on evaluating individual progress relative to each student's starting point.
This book addresses assessment issues in light of the present state of affairs. The first part discusses new alternatives in the assessment of achievement in various subject areas, focusing on agenda, practice, impact and evaluation of the assessment....

French novelist Marcel Proust instructs us that, "a voyage of discovery consists, not of seeking new landscapes, but of seeing through new eyes." Nowhere in the practice of education do we need to see through new eyes than in the domain of assessment. We have been trapped by our collective experiences to see a limited array of things to be assessed, a very few ways of assessing them, limited strategies for communicating results and inflexible roles of players in the assessment drama. This edited book of readings jolts us out of traditional habits of mind about assessment. An international...