Gordon Stobart, Institute of Education, University of London, UK
This book argues that assessment shapes how we see ourselves and how we learn. At a time when people are labelled in terms of their ability, learning styles or achievement, it takes a hard look at these claims. It also shows how, in our test driven culture, assessment can often undermine effective learning by encouraging shallow "for-the-test" learning and by treating test results as an end in themselves. The author explores how we can develop assessments which generate deeper learning and which can play a constructive role in creating our identities as people and learners.
Examining the purposes and consequences of assessment, Testing Times critically examines high-profile uses such as:
This accessible and provocative book will be of great interest to educational professionals, academics and researchers.
Contents:
1. Assessing Assessment
2. Intelligence Testing: how to create a monster
3. The resistance movement: multiple and emotional intelligences
4. The lure of learning styles
5. The diploma disease – still contagious after all these years?
6. The long shadow of accountability
7. Reasons to be cheerful: assessment for learning
8. Reclaiming assessment: becoming responsible for who we are
Published by Routledge, March 2008
Paperback: 978-0-415-40475-4 – £22.99
Hardback: 978-0-415-40474-7 – £75.00
http://www.routledge.com/books/Testing-Times-isbn9780415404754