Developing Sustainable Assessment Cultures in Norwegian Schools as Learning Organisations.

This pre-project will develop the foundation for a larger project on the development of sustainable assessment cultures in Norwegian primary, lower-secondary and upper-secondary schools. The concept of assessment culture is theoretically understood in ter ms of the inter-relationship between pupil assessment, adapted teaching and the school as a learning organisation. The main project will gather systematic, evidence-based knowledge through empirical and theoretically driven quantitative and qualitative research. Accordingly, questionnaires of a larger number of schools will be distributed, along with in-depth observation and interview of a smaller sample of Norwegian Schools will be planned. To provide a foundation and backgro und for the main research application the pre-project will undertake two empirical pilot projects, assess the existing status of the national and international knowledge on sustainable assessment cultures in schools, and lastly, use the finding and discus sions among project researchers in the pre-project period to formulate detailed research questions capable of generating new models and theories of sustainable assessment cultures in Norwegian schools. Both genders are represented in the pr e-project team. Environmental considerations are considered in the sense that the pre-project will be available in electronic, rather than print form, and secondly, the pre-project researchers will utilise electronic platforms, where possible for meetings (e.g. Team Portal). Thus, reducing pollution and travel. The average age of the researchers is 55 years and the project leader is 46 years old. In the main project application a younger, beginning academic will be recruited as a doctoral fellow.