This book provides key insights into how educational leaders can successfully navigate the
turbulence of political debate surrounding leading student assessment and professionalised
practice. Given the highly politicised nature of assessment it addresses leaders and aspiring
leaders who are open to being challenged willing to explore controversy and capable of
engaging in informed critical discourse.The book presents the macro concepts that these
audiences must have to guide optimal assessment policy and practice. Collectively the chapters
highlight important assessment purposes and models including intended and unintended effects
of assessment in a globalised context.The book provides opportunities to explore cultural
similarities and particularities. It invites readers to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions
about ourselves and colleagues in other settings. The chapters highlight the cultural clashes
that may occur when cross-cultural borrowing of assessment strategies policies and tools
takes place. However authors also encourage sophisticated critical analyses of potential
lessons that may be drawn from other contexts and systems.Readers will encounter challenges
from authors to deconstruct their assessment values beliefs and preconceptions. Indeed one
purpose of the book is to destabilise certainties about assessment that prevail and to embrace
the assessment possibilities that can emerge from cognitive dissonance.
