Product Description: This ground breaking book is unique in bringing together two perspectives on learning - sociocultural theory and neuroscience. Drawing on both perspectives, it foregrounds important developments in our understanding of what learning is, where and how learning occurs and what we can do to understand learning as an everyday process...read more

By examining ideas about learning that transcend typical boundaries, such as school/workplace or home/school, this book emphasies the socially negotiated and embedded nature of meaning-making and how learners learn to use the cognitive tools of their cultural community through participation in social activity. The editors argue that this is the means by which individual agency is extended and learners' identities, as forms of competency, are transformed. The book locates sociocultural understanding in a wide theoretical frame and demonstrates its implications for learning and assessment generally, covering a range of educational and workplace setttings. The contributions challenge ways of understanding learning and thinking about practice, both teaching and assessment. Drawing on the international literature, this book is essential reading for students of curriculum, learning and assesment in all sectors from pre-primary to further and higher education. It is suitable as a core text for masters and taught doctorate programmes. It will be of interest to a range of professionals involved with curriculum, learning and the practice of teaching and assessment. It is also relevant to those in work-based and professional education and training, and informal educational settings. A unique collection in a field that is underrepresented, it will also be of interest to an acadmeic audience.

'Hall and Burke acknowledge that formative assessment is hard work. But they make clear that the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages! They neatly divide it into bite-sized chapters, with each building neatly on the one before - [this book] is easily accessible to the reader' - "BJET". This book explains and exemplifies formative assessment in practice. Drawing on incidents and case studies from primary classrooms, it describes and analyses how teachers use formative assessment to promote learning. It argues the case for formative assessment with reference to sociocultural perspectives on learning and it examines this in the context of current assessment policy.Themes addressed in the various chapters include feedback, the power and roles of learners and teachers in formative assessment; self and peer assessment; and sharing success criteria with learners. Individual chapters explore formative assessment in: literacy, numeracy, art, science,and history. In addition there are two chapters on formative assessment in the early years. "Making Formative Assessment Work" provides teachers, student teachers, teacher educators and researchers with a sophisticated grasp of issues in formative assessment and how they relate to the improvement of pupil learning.

“In this interesting, informative and accessible book Kathy Hall takes you on a journey of exploration and discovery and succeeds in challenging the reader’s own stance on the teaching, not only of reading, but also of literacy as a whole.… an excellent, thought-provoking book which empowers the reader to critically reassess their own practice and will have a positive effect in many classrooms” British Journal of Educational Studies * How do different reading experts interpret evidence about one child as a reader?* What perspectives can be brought to bear on reading in the classroom?* How can a rich notion of literacy be promoted in the regular primary classroom?In this book Kathy Hall invites you to extend your perspective on reading by considering the responses of well known reading scholars (e.g. Barbara Comber, Henrietta Dombey, Laura Huxford and David Wray) to evidence of one child as a reader. Reading evidence from eight-year-old Stephen, who is 'under-achieving' in reading, together with the suggestions of various experts about how his teacher could support him provide a vehicle for discussing different perspectives on reading in the primary classroom. The various approaches to literacy analysed include psycho-linguistic, cognitive-psychological, socio-cultural and socio-political. The book aims to guide your choice of teaching strategies and to support your rationale for those choices. Acknowledging the complexity and the richness of the field of research on literacy, the book demonstrates the futility of searching for a single right method of literacy development. Rather we should search for multiple perspectives, guided by the diverse needs of learners. (view table of contents)

Playing a sinister game of cards, Brittany draws a joker and becomes the target of evil jokers wherever she goes, stamping the four suits of the playing deck on her arm. Original.