Paul J Black

King's College London | KCL · Department of Education and Professional Studies

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...

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...

Since our 1998 review of research on classroom assessment and learning was published, we have contributed to theorising formative assessment, but recognise that this work is incomplete. In this paper, we take up a suggestion by Perrenoud that any theory of formative assessment must be embedded within a wider theoretical field, specifically, within...

The main aim of this article is to argue that the need for teachers and their schools to prepare their students for life beyond their school‐days must be met by requiring teachers themselves to both achieve this aim and produce the evidence of their students’ capability as learners. In so doing, they must change their classroom teaching from a focu...

This chapter characterises the two key purposes of assessment, formative and summative, within a general model of assessment of student learning. It discusses reliability and validity issues in relation to the two purposes and considers formative and summative purposes as related and can be brought together in developing a dependable approach to su...

Teachers, both of science and of religion, have to help pupils to learn about the links between these subjects. An effective way to support this learning should start from the beliefs and ideas that pupils already have, ideas which might well be influenced by public debates, often characterised by controversy, between those holding strong beliefs a...

This paper builds on the current literature base about learning progressions in science to address the question, “What is the nature of the learning progression in the content domain of the structure of matter?” We introduce a learning progression in response to that question and illustrate a methodology, the Construct Modeling (Wilson, 2005) appro...

Two functions of assessment, the formative and the summative, are often seen as independent of one another, and even in conflict.

The original paper Paul Black is commenting on a paper by Kevin Keohane, 'Physics Education—21 years on' (Keohane 1987 Phys. Educ. 22 142). Professor Keohane was the first Consultant Editor and his original editorial is included on the opening editorial of this issue (Williams 2016 Phys. Educ. 51 030101).

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...

The preceding articles in this issue describe a diverse range of projects which had in common the aim of implementing or improving the practice of formative assessment, and thereby to secure some of the benefits attributed to it. This article attempts to set up a framework within which each of the different studies may be located and inter-related....

This article considers lessons learnt through involvement in several assessment projects. Early experience, in university work and in school examinations, led to an opportunity to help establish a novel system of assessment for an innovative school curriculum. Different lessons were then learnt from work on a national survey of school students’ lea...

The issue which this chapter explores is the extent to which, and the ways in which, the ethos of a faith-based school should include a commitment to particular qualities of the work in every classroom. The chapter discusses several innovations in classroom work, including interaction in dialogue between teachers and students, the nature of the fee...

Many texts on pedagogy show a surprising neglect of assessment. In analyses of the broad social, cultural and political contexts in which education is embedded, assessment is treated as part of 'instruction', i.e. the details of the teaching and learning practices in schools and their classrooms. However, even where these practices are discussed, l...

Much has already been written on the controversies surrounding the use of different test theories in educational assessment. Other authors have noted the prevalence of classical test theory over item response theory in practice. This Special Issue draws together articles based upon work conducted on the Reliability Programme for England’s examinati...

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...

The overall aim of this article is to analyze the relationships between the roles of assessment in pedagogy, the interactions between curriculum assessment and pedagogy, and the study of pupils' progression in learning. It is argued that well-grounded evidence of pupils' progressions in learning is crucial to the work of teachers, so that a method...

The nature and quality of the outcomes of learning are central to any discussion of the learner’s experience, from whichever perspective that experience is considered. For those outcomes to be assessed it is also necessary to articulate in some way the constructs on which such judgments are based. The relationship between the intended outcomes of l...

Incl. bibl.

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...

This article discusses two different purposes of assessment: formative assessment is designed to support pupils’ learning, whilst summative assessment is designed to review what has been learnt, perhaps to record it in certificates or diplomas. Formative assessment is concerned with the frequent interactions between teacher and pupils which are ess...

Whilst many definitions of formative assessment have been offered, there is no clear rationale to define and delimit it within broader theories of pedagogy. This paper aims to offer such a rationale, within a framework which can also unify the diverse set of practices which have been described as formative. The analysis is used to relate formative...

The outcomes of learning are central to any discussion of the learner’s experience, from whichever perspective that experience is considered. For an assessment of learning to be valid, the inferences drawn from the evidence of learning should be demonstrably aligned to learning outcomes. This study of five different educational contexts shows how o...

In the past decade, formative assessment has attracted a good deal of research interest in all subject areas, including second language education. It is interesting to note that there is now a lively discussion on the relationship between assessment and learning among applied linguists and language educators. In this article, the author will attemp...

The articles assembled in this special issue reflect very faithfully the diversity in what is now a rich field of development. But because they do this, they also highlight a problem: what it is about this topic that leads to the contributors describing such a diverse range of approaches to the practices of formative assessment?

In discussing the relationship between curriculum and assessment it is commonly argued that assessment should be aligned to curriculum or, alternatively, that they should be congruent with each other. This article explores that relationship in five educational contexts in the UK and in Europe, ranging across school education, workplace learning, vo...

Paul Black, Professor Emeritus at King's College, London and chair of the Task Group on Assessment and Testing (TGAT) from 1987 to 1988, argues that formative testing is undervalued and underdeveloped, and that its use could lead to radical and significant changes in Special Education.

This book makes a major contribution to the creation of a professional knowledge base for teachers by building on previous work associated with ‘formative assessment’ or ‘assessment for learning’ which has a strong evidence base, and is now being promoted nationally and internationally. However, it adds an important new dimension by reporting the c...

In early 2007, the Department for Education and Skills issued the ‘Making Good Progress’ (1) consultation document seeking views on ‘… what more we could do, without compromising improved standards, to help schools, parents and pupils to focus even more on individual progress’. The document looked in detail at the rates of progress that pupils were...

Whilst formative assessment is now well established as a valuable practice in improving the involvement and attainment of pupils, its specific implementation in particular school subjects has received little attention. This paper sets out to discuss the development of formative assessment practices in the learning of languages. A general introducti...

Learning how to learn is an essential preparation for lifelong learning. This book offers a set of in-service resources to help teachers develop new classroom practices informed by sound research. It builds on previous work associated with ‘formative assessment’ or ‘assessment for learning’. However, it adds an important new dimension by taking acc...

In 1988, the UK government accepted most of a set of radical proposals which their Task Group on Assessment and Testing had set out as the basis for a new scheme of national assessment. This paper outlines the formulation, the reception and the eventual abandonment of the scheme, illustrating how this outcome emerged from the interplay of political...

The Learning How to Learn (LHTL) Project’s study of learning was comprehensive in attempting to explore learning practices from several different perspectives. This paper reports one of these explorations: into the beliefs and attitudes of pupils. This was carried out using questionnaires composed of questions exploring beliefs about, and attitudes...

This pamphlet results from the Assessment Systems for the Future project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. The project was set up by the Assessment Reform Group in September 2003 to consider evidence from research and practice about the summative assessment of school pupils, and to propose ways in which such assessment can benefit their education...

This pamphlet results from the Assessment Systems for the Future project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. The project was set up by the Assessment Reform Group in September 2003 to consider evidence from research and practice about the summative assessment of school pupils, and to propose ways in which such assessment can benefit their education...

This pamphlet results from the Assessment Systems for the Future project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. The project was set up by the Assessment Reform Group in September 2003 to consider evidence from research and practice about the summative assessment of school pupils, and to propose ways in which such assessment can benefit their education...

Los países del Reino Unido tienen gran tradición en lo que respecta a rendición de cuentas y pruebas estandarizadas externas, similares al Simce que se realiza en Chile. Sin embargo, en las últimas décadas ha surgido una corriente crítica de académicos que se ha dedicado a investigar las políticas de evaluación, sus propósitos e impactos. El Assess...

This article provides an introduction to the TLRP Learning How to Learn Project and a context for the articles that follow in this special issue. The origins of the research, in a concern to investigate the organizational and network conditions that support innovation in teaching and learning, and in a perceived need to align research on pedagogy a...

This paper stems from the ESRC TLRP Learning How to Learn—in Classrooms, Schools and Networks Project, and explores how Assessment for Learning (AfL) relates, conceptually, to learning how to learn (LHTL). The term LHTL was intended to draw attention to a primary focus on learning practices, and we have related the processes of AfL to LHTL. A third...

The Assessment Systems for the Future (ASF) project is a project of the Assessment Reform Group ARG, led by Wynne Harlen. Its focus is summative assessment and the role that assessment by teachers can take in it. This paper begins, in part 1, with a statement of, and rationale for, the learning outcomes that an effective summative assessment system...

The Assessment Systems for the Future (ASF) project is a project of the Assessment Reform Group ARG, led by Wynne Harlen. Its focus is summative assessment and the role that assessment by teachers can take in it. In Part 1 (sections 2 and 3) of this paper we explain the reasons for the focus on summative assessment by teachers, the project procedur...

This article outlines the main assessment traditions in four countries – England, France, Germany and the United States – in order to explore the prospects for the integration of summative and formative functions of assessment during compulsory schooling. In England, teachers' judgments do feed into national assessments, at 7, 11, 14 and 16, but co...

The Assessment Systems for the Future (ASF) project is a project of the Assessment Reform Group ARG, led by Wynne Harlen. Working Paper 1 offers an analytical framework that can be applied to any context in which teachers assess, for summative purposes, their own students’ work. Working Paper 2 summarises the evidence from two systematic reviews of...

The Assessment Systems for the Future (ASF) project is a project of the Assessment Reform Group ARG, led by Wynne Harlen. Its focus is summative assessment and the role that assessment by teachers can take in it. This paper summarises the research evidence revealed by the latest in a series of reviews of research that have explored what can be lear...

This paper is the story of a development which started with a review of what research had to say about formative assessment. The work of this review is first described. Its results led to development work with teachers to explore how ideas taken from the research could be turned into practice. A description of this work in a second section is follo...

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...

In February 2003, the group embarked on a two-year plan of review work focused on the use of assessment by teachers for summative purposes. This focus was in response to evidence from previous reviews (Black and Wiliam, 1998; Crooks, 1988;) that, on the one hand, formative assessment can raise standards of achievement, and that, on the other, claim...

The ALRSG was created as one of the first wave of the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre) Review Groups in 2000 and undertook its first review from February 2001 to January 2002. This was entitled 'A systematic review of the impact of summative assessment and testing on students' motivation for learni...

The completion of the first ten years of this journal is an occasion for review and reflection. The main issues that have been addressed over the ten years are summarized in four main sections: Purposes, International Trends, Quality Concerns and Assessment for Learning. Each of these illustrates the underlying significance of the themes of princip...

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 authors trace the development of the King's Formative Assessment Programme from its origins in diagnostic testing in the 1970s, through the graded assessment movement in the 1980s, to the present day. In doing so, they discuss the practical issues involved in reviewing research and outline the strategies that were used to try to communicate the...

In this paper we trace the development of the King?s Formative Assessment Programme (KFAP) from its origins in diagnostic testing in the 1970s, through the graded assessment movement in the 1980s, to the present day. In doing so, we discuss the practical issues involved in reviewing research and outline the strategies we used to try to communicate...

The review reported here was prompted by the rapid changes associated with the ‘information age’. New technologies have created both the need for education to provide students with what are described as ‘higher level thinking skills’ and the opportunity to teach and assess these skills. There is also evidence from two previous reviews of assessment...

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...

A brief narrative description of the journal article, document, or resource. This paper describes the design of a major development and research project within the Teaching and Learning Research Programme in the United Kingdom. It outlines the project's aims to enhance teaching and learning in schools through innovative practice at classroom and sc...

The annual spring conference of the X-ray analysis group of The Institute of Physics was held at Ashorne Hill, Leamington Spa, on 12-13 April, 1951. The subject was "The texture and structure of metals." Recent work in three important branches of this subject was presented in eighteen papers and a number of short contributions. An evening discourse...

The recoilless fraction for the elastic nuclear resonant scattering of gamma rays has been investigated by measuring the temperature dependence of the interference between the elastic scattering of 14.4 kev 57Fe gamma rays by the resonant nuclei and by the electrons in a single crystal of natural iron set for the (110) Bragg reflection. The measure...

Measurements of the volume coefficient of thermal expansion and of the self-diffusion coefficient of 99.999% pure tin in the solid phase at temperatures up to 0.05 °C below the melting point, and of the expansion coefficient of liquid tin supercooled through the melting point, show no evidence of the pre- and post-melting anomalies predicted by the...

Using a simple classical model the electronic and nuclear resonant scattering of gamma rays by a monatomic crystal has been calculated neglecting extinction effects. The scattering due to interference between the electronic and nuclear systems has an elastic and an inelastic component and the angular distribution of the latter differs from the dist...

In a previous paper Black, Evans and O'Connor developed the theory of the interference between Rayleigh and nuclear resonant scattering and presented experimental results for polycrystalline scatterers which showed a general qualitative agreement with the theory. Measurements have now been made on the scattering within Bragg peaks of 57Fe gamma ray...

A factual enquiry into the assessment methods used for the award of degrees in physics has shown that most of the sixteen institutions consulted adopt a common pattern. The assessment relies on written papers taken at the end of the final year and a rough analysis of these papers indicates that high marks might be gained on them by use of a well-or...

For seven weeks of the final year in an honours degree course, students have devoted the whole of their time to a new type of study course. They worked, in groups of about twenty-five, on a particular theme or topic in physics. The study proceeded by a variety of informal discussions in groups or sub-groups, student lectures, written essays, indivi...

A modified method for the preparation of narrow-line 57Fe Mössbauer sources by electrodeposition has been developed and an investigation of the causes of line broadening has been carried out. The effects of the crystallographic structure and the state of perfection of the host have been studied. It has been observed that the linewidths are unaffect...

Mossbauer spectra from a single crystal of hydrated sodium ferrocyanide indicate a shift in line position with crystal orientation which is consistent with a quadrupole splitting of 0.56 gamma o. Voigt profile analysis of spectra from powders indicates a smaller broadening of the Lorentz component, 0.27 Gamma o; the inconsistency is explained by pr...

The interference between nuclear resonant and Rayleigh-Thomson scattering from single crystals of iron has been observed for various magnetizations of the sources and scatterer. The general theory of this phenomenon is presented, and specific cases are discussed in detail. Experimental results are in general accord with theory, if effects of domain...