Assessment is a fundamental part of the design process of teaching and learning. Educators knowing and understanding their own beliefs and values about the professional work they do in assessment is crucial to learner success and progress. Being able and willing to write quality assessment tasks, to collect the evidence of student learning and to moderate this evidence with colleagues are all part of the science and art of being a professional in education. Assessment enables the educator to understand what students have learnt and determine what they will learn next. It allows educators to set goals for improvement, design the learning program in collaboration with learners beginning with the end in mind, and monitor progress. Educators are continually assessing and this chapter endeavours to make sense of this important professional skill, which impacts on teaching and learning. To illustrate these ideas and skills in relation to Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS), examples from the Australian Curriculum: HASS will be used.

“In Chapter 9, the authors discuss the ability of good language teachers to employ a range of formative and summative assessment practices to assess the individual learner’s needs and to address these needs in their instructional practice. The authors draw on the analysis of responses given by language practitioners in the higher education setting to suggest that learning-oriented assessment can enhance language teaching by helping learners engage with assessment feedback and benefit from it.”