To change the thinking of the world

If we wish to discover the truth about an educational system, Derek Rowntree has famously observed, then we must ‘look into’ its assessment procedures, for ‘the spirit and style of student assessment defines the de facto curriculum’ ( Rowntree, 1987 ). Yet any such approximation of the ‘truth’, even if it were to be attainable, might have to proceed from the assumption that teaching, learning and assessment practices are essentially stable and static —an assumption that seems especially questionable in the late 1990s. Indeed, in many countries of the world, higher education in the present decade has been characterized by flux rather than stasis, by pressures to review and rethink traditional curriculum and teaching practices. What might, therefore, be most appropriate in such a period would be systematically to ‘look into’ the nature, scope and scale of change in practices which were being introduced (which might, in turn, throw light on shifts in the ‘spirit and style’ of student assessment as well as on the new learning society which is emerging).