Can we design a supportive assessment system? Keynote speech by Paul Black of "Inside the Black Box".

In 2001 Paul Black, with Dylan Wiliam, wrote the brilliant and influential Inside the Black Box - Raising Standards through Classroom Assessment [50 kB PDF], about the importance of formative feedback in learning.

Here, from 4 May 2007, is Paul Black's 1 hour keynote speech from the conference of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors [take care - this opens directly in your browser]. The PowerPoint slides that went with the talk are also on the IEA web site [186 kB PPT]. The talk contains plenty of insights into the value of formative feedback, as well as a telling quote from Margaret Thatcher's memoires on teacher-led assessment:

"The fact that it was then welcomed by the Labour party, the National Union of Teachers and the Times Educational Supplement was enough to confirm for me that its approach was suspect. It proposed an elaborate and complex system of assessment - teacher dominated and uncosted. It adopted the 'diagnostic' view of tests, placed the emphasis on teachers doing their own assessment and was written in an impenetrable educationalist jargon."

(Dylan Wiliam's 5 September 2007 keynote "Assessment, learning and technology: prospects at the periphery of control", is accessible from the the ALT web site.)