A volume in Research on Sociocultural Influences on Motivation and LearningSeries Editor: Dennis M. McInerney, The Hong Kong Institute of EducationAssessment for learning is meant to engage, motivate, and enable students to do better intheir learning. However, how students themselves perceive assessments (both high-stakesqualifications and low-stakes monitoring) is not well understood. This volume collectsresearch studies from Europe, North and South America, Asia, and New Zealand thathave deliberately focused on how students in primary, secondary, and tertiary education conceive of, experience,understand, and evaluate assessments. Assessment for learning has assumed that formative assessments and classroompractices would be an unqualified success in terms of student learning outcomes. Making use of a variety of qualitativelyinterpreted focus groups, observations, and interviews and factor-analytic survey methods, the studies collected in thisvolume raise doubts as to the validity of this formulation. We commend this volume to readers hoping to stimulate theirown thinking and research in the area of student assessment. We believe the chapters will challenge researchers, policymakers, teacher educators, and instructors as to how assessment for learning can be implemented.
