
Christine HarrisonKing's College London | KCL · School of Education, Communication & Society
Christine Harrison
BSc(Zoology), CNAA Postgrad Diploma in Physics, PhD (Science Education)
Interested in how teachers make decisions from evidence, experiences and their beliefs
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Introduction
Publications
Publications (60)
In the final chapter of this book, the Thinking the Unthinkable Assessment Capacity Framework is revisited and expanded with consideration for how it directs teacher learning and teacher education. The framework invites teachers to question: What am I thinking, feeling, and doing in assessment now? How did I get here? And what else is possible? Lev...
This book presents a novel framework, Thinking the Unthinkable, aimed at cultivating teacher assessment capacity. The framework includes four fundamental capacities: epistemic, embodied, ethical, and experiential. In this chapter, the embodied capacity is explored through literature, preservice teacher reflections and narratives, and interpretive a...
Assessment is one of the most complex activities in classrooms today. Every day, teachers need to negotiate and navigate historical, political, social, emotional, ethical, relational, and consequential assessment contexts and decisions to effectively support students’ learning and wellbeing. In this chapter, the challenge of assessment and assessme...
This book presents a novel framework, Thinking the Unthinkable, aimed at cultivating teacher assessment capacity. The framework includes four fundamental capacities: epistemic, embodied, ethical, and experiential. In this chapter, the experiential capacity is explored through literature, preservice teacher reflections and narratives, and interpreti...
This chapter outlines the landscape of assessment education across jurisdictions, namely Australia, Canada, England, and New Zealand. Rooted in a Bernsteinian Perspective of knowledge codification (i.e., vertical and horizontal knowledge systems), assessment learning is structured in relation to strongly and weakly classified knowledge. Comparisons...
This book presents a novel framework, Thinking the Unthinkable, aimed at cultivating teacher assessment capacity. The framework includes four fundamental capacities: epistemic, embodied, ethical, and experiential. In this chapter, the epistemic capacity is explored through literature, preservice teacher reflections and narratives, and interpretive...
Over the past three decades, policy and professional standards have repeatedly called for teachers to integrate assessment continuously across their practice in various ways to identify, monitor, support, evaluate, and report on student learning. Educational researchers have conceptualised and operationalised multiple constructs to understand teach...
This book presents a novel framework, Thinking the Unthinkable, aimed at cultivating teacher assessment capacity. The framework includes four fundamental capacities: epistemic, embodied, ethical, and experiential. In this chapter, the ethical capacity is explored through literature, preservice teacher reflections and narratives, and interpretive an...
In 1999 we published a review summarising the r ult from over 250 articl by researchers from several countries [1]. A full account of this work is given in an earlier paper in this volume [2] and, as explained in that paper this review showed that there was a strong body of evidence to support a claim that formative assessment practices can raise s...
This systematic literature review shows how innovation is used within teacher education research; how conceptualised; and whether different types of innovation can be distinguished. 156 studies met the selection criteria. Analysis comprised: frequency of use; research design; and type of innovation, adapting Sternberg et al.’s (2003) typology. Demo...
We have little certainty about the specific skills and capabilities that young children need for their future and so we need to foster children’s confidence and capabilities to apply new skills in novel contexts. Within STEM environments, children learn how STEM claims are generated, evaluated and shared and inquiry provides opportunities for learn...
This article introduces this special issue by addressing the types of assessment practices that are possible within STEM inquiry classrooms, where the focus is on noticing, developing, and improving inquiry competencies. Three domains are explored: informal formative assessment occurring in classroom interactions; structured formative assessment wh...
This paper provides both a summary and plenary paper for a Special Issue of papers that build on the findings of a research project that investigated formative and summative assessment methods to support and to improve inquiry-based science teaching and learning. The paper aims to unravel some of the complexity that underpins classroom assessment p...
There has been a global trend toward increased accountability and assessment in schools over the past several decades. Across policy and professional standards, teachers have been repeatedly called to integrate assessment throughout their practice to identify, monitor, support, evaluate, and report on student learning. This professional capacity to...
Background: Inquiry pedagogy has been advocated as means to engage and motivate students to learn science. The development of teacher formative assessment practice in inquiry is key for a successful implementation of student-centred inquiry pedagogy in the classroom. Purpose: This study explores secondary science teachers’ espoused beliefs about in...
p>Resumo: Em seu amplamente divulgado artigo “Por dentro da caixa-preta”, Black e Wiliam demonstraram que melhorar a qualidade da avaliação formativa eleva o desempenho dos estudantes. Agora, eles e seus colegas reportam os resultados de um projeto que se seguiu ao primeiro com o intuito de ajudar professores a mudarem suas práticas e os estudantes...
Yuli Rahmawati’s paper presents an auto-ethnographic inquiry into her lived experiences as a science teacher in different countries. Through her reflections and analysis of events, Yuli captures and builds a model of her identity and explores the influence of inter- and intra-cultural perspectives in shaping how she recognizes herself and brings me...
Assessment for learning (AfL) practices are commonly recommended as effective classroom strategies for providing teachers with information about student understanding. For teachers, the substantive potential of these AfL practices to inform student learning actions depends on what teachers notice and select as a focus and how they interpret and act...
Inquiry activities generate rich opportunities for STEM learning and for assessment. When teachers pay attention to assessment information collected during the course of learning, they are able to interpret and make decisions about such assessment data in a timely fashion that can drive future planning and support student learning, for example thro...
Teachers conceptualise inquiry learning in science learning differently. This is particularly evident when teachers are introduced to inquiry pedagogy within a new context. This exploratory study draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with eight pre-service secondary biology teachers following a day visit with university tutors to the Royal...
This book is the first book to explore assessment issues and opportunities occurring due to the real world of human, cultural, historical, and societal influences upon assessment practices, policies, and statistical modeling. With chapters written by experts in the field, the book engages with numerous forms of assessment: from classroom-level form...
This paper is focused on the characterization of informal formative assessment conversations (i.e., interactions on-the-fly) from a methodological perspective. Interactions on-the-fly are unexpected teachable moments in which the teacher tries to probe students' understanding and use that information to support their inquiry process. One of the cod...
In England, recent changes to the National Curriculum for primary science (Great Britain, DfE, 2013) have tried to respond to the legacy of national tests set at the end of primary schooling (10-11 years old) and establish a better balance between formative and summative assessment practice. Within this context, we have developed a professional dev...
The adoption of Inquiry Based Science Education (IBSE) has been a policy priority over the last decade in Europe. IBSE pedagogy cannot be dissociated from the assessment of inquiry skills. Assess Inquiry in Science, Technology and Mathematics Education (ASSIST-ME) is one of the two FP7 projects that are contributing to developing our understanding...
W niniejszym zbiorze „Jednostek dydaktycznych SAILS” przedstawiono korzyści związane ze stosowaniem IBSE (Inquiry Based Science Education) w praktyce szkolnej, praktyczne przykłady pokazujące, w jaki sposób można zintegrować ocenę uczniów z procesem dociekania, i zaprezentowano szereg narzędzi oraz strategii oceny uczniów samodzielnie dociekających...
Classroom assessment has grown in prominence over the last few decades and particularly the formative approach to instruction through assessment for learning (AfL). This paper draws across a number of studies about classroom talk to make a case for and propose some of the preconditions for effective feedback through Assessment for Learning interact...
The drive towards a greater emphasis on inquiry-based science education (IBSE) has been well articulated through international reports such as Rocard (2007) and The European Commission report Science Education for Responsible Citizenship (2015). These reports stress the need for quality science education as crucial in promoting a culture of scienti...
Teaching is a highly personal activity where teachers bring together and make sense of notions of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. This chapter sets out to explore teachers' formative and summative assessment practices in science classrooms and outline some of the tensions and synergies when wanting to change their assessment practices. It desc...
This paper sets out to explore science teachers’ classroom assessment practices and outlines some of the tensions and synergies in changing assessment practices. It describes episodes from a collaborative action research project with science teachers designed to support the strengthening of classroom assessment practices – the King’s Researching Ex...
Summative assessments that are integrated within the daily pedagogy of teachers are problematic. Some argue that they cannot both be helpful to pedagogy and yield results that are comparable across and between schools. Others claim that there is enough evidence to show that these targets can be achieved. The project described in this paper explored...
This paper describes some of the findings of a project which set out to explore and develop teachers’ understanding and practices in their summative assessments. The focus was on those summative assessments that are used on a regular basis within schools for guiding the progress of pupils and for internal accountability. The project combined both i...
The focus of this collaborative research project of King’s College London, and the Weizmann Institute, Israel is on investigating the ways in which teachers can demonstrate accomplished teaching in a specific domain of science and on the teacher learning that is generated through continuing professional development (CPD) programmes that lead toward...
Chris Harrison explains the importance of classroom talk in learning and describes some strategies that can help teachers facilitate dialogue and orchestrate discussion.
This article seeks to explore how teachers develop assessment for learning practices in secondary school science, mathematics and English classrooms. Drawing on interviews, teacher reflective writing, lesson observations and field notes of teacher meetings, it highlights the importance of opportunities for professional dialogue between teachers and...
Incl. abstract and bibl. references 'Inside the Black Box' (Phi Delta Kappan, October 1998) summarized research evidence that showed that improving the quality of teachers' day-to-day classroom assessment could have substantial impact on students' learning. Here we report on one study that has attempted to put this into practice with 24 secondary s...
While it is generally acknowledged that increased use of formative assessment (or assessment for learning) leads to higher quality learning, it is often claimed that the pressure in schools to improve the results achieved by students in externally‐set tests and examinations precludes its use. This paper reports on the achievement of secondary schoo...
The main of the report is to address the principles and the long-term problems in the assessment of school science. The five main sections discuss, in turn, the underlying framework for the analysis, then the three main areas of curriculum, teaching and learning, and assessment, and the final conclusions.
The main of the report is to address the principles and the long-term problems in the assessment of school science. The five main sections discuss, in turn, the underlying framework for the analysis, then the three main areas of curriculum, teaching and learning, and assessment, and the final conclusions.
The this paper has two foci. The first is to present an account of how we developed formative assessment practices with a group of 36 teachers. This is then complemented by a reflection on the productive and positive experience of these teachers, in the light of learning principles, of changes in the roles of teachers and pupils in the task of lear...
Describes some outcomes of a project in which teachers from six schools developed formative assessment in their science classrooms. Discusses three main areas of work: (1) questioning in classroom dialogue; (2) quality of such questions; and (3) feedback on homework. Indicates that teachers saw that the changes were transferring more of the respons...
____________________________________________________________ It has been argued that self-and peer -assessment by students ought to form a part of any development of formative assessment in classrooms. A group of teachers have found it both rewarding and practicable. ______________________________________________________________________ Abstract Se...
In this paper we examine the issues and difficulties that arise when teachers attempt to develop and implement a system of summative assessment by teachers rather than by externally constructed tests. There has been much recent controversy over coursework-based examinations with concerns centring on the issue of plagiarism. In mathematics, teachers...