This article takes the form of a case-study, outlining the progress of policy and practice in Scotland towards the introduction of Assessment for Learning in pre-school and schools for children aged 3-14. The period described comprises the launch of 5-14 curriculum and assessment guidelines in the early 1990s, a review and consultation on assessment in pre-school and 5-14 by HM Inspectorate of Schools, the recent assessment development programme, Assessment is for Learning (AifL), initiated in 2002, and the publication by the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED) of a set of curriculum and assessment policy documents for education 3-18 in November 2004.The assessment guidelines published in 1991 put considerable emphasis on professional practice in assessment as part of learning and teaching, promoting what would now be recognized as 'assessment for learning'. However, curriculum guidelines for English language and mathematics and new arrangements for national testing in reading, writing and mathematics were published at the same time. These commanded considerable professional and public attention, so that curriculum content and measurement of attainment levels, rather than the quality of assessment practice in classrooms, became the main focus of schools' planning and action. The increasing emphasis on standards, target-setting and accountability in the mid-to late 1990s ensured that measurement, rather than assessment for learning, remained the main priority.Recognition on the part of ministers that assessment and testing arrangements were not working well for learners, teachers or policy-makers led to the 1999 review and consultation. This once again asserted the importance for learning and achievement of good professional practice in classroom assessment. At the same time, the emphasis in policy more generally was shifting towards establishing a culture of self-evaluation in local authorities and schools. The Assessment is for Learning development programme has sought to bring together these various threads in a coherent national system of assessment. It aims to promote excellence in professional assessment practice, the primacy of teachers' judgements and sound arrangements for local quality assurance of those judgements, to ensure consistency. For national monitoring of attainment, there will be a cycle of sample surveys rather than a collection of data for all schools and pupils. The programme has also sought to take account of research on the management of change to ensure that the new system is developed collaboratively with stakeholders and put into effect in all Scottish schools.

The formative Assessment for Learning proposals outlined by Black and Wiliam (e.g. Black et al, 2002)

Plans for curriculum or pedagogical innovation often lead to little change in practice. Many innovations successful in their early stages fail later, with little post‐innovation analysis to understand why. In Scotland, in 2001, the Scottish Executive Education Department initiated the Assessment is for Learning (AifL) programme. Recognising problems in previous national attempts to improve assessment in Scotland, AifL attempted to explore ways in which an integrated and coherent system of assessment might be developed, with learning and learners at its centre. Two evaluations of the first phase of AifL indicated that the programme was having some impact. Changes in teachers' assessment practices were perceived to have been taking place, but questions remained about why practices were changing and what implications there might be for AifL as it was scaled up. This article offers an interpretative commentary on a study that sought to explore in greater depth issues raised in the two earlier evaluative studies of the AifL programme. While there is widespread recognition that meaningful change is a complex process, the article interrogates ideas of complexity. Finally, the article uses understandings of complexity to challenge simplistic ideas of scaling up projects and concludes that learning how to live with complexity is a necessary feature of designing models for change in classrooms, in schools and in wider educational systems.

Scotland, in common with many countries internationally, has been learning how to align ideas from research with policy and practice. This article considers what Scotland learned from large-scale evaluations of its Assessment is for Learning (AifL) programme and the extent to which this evidence was used to inform future learning within the national programme. More recently, the policy focus in Scotland has shifted to the creation of a new curriculum, Curriculum for Excellence, subsuming AifL. Merging curriculum and assessment innovations brought new challenges in the alignment of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Drawing on a Scottish Government-funded research project, Assessment at Transition, designed to identify and explore emerging gaps between practice in schools and local authorities and national curriculum and assessment policy aspirations, the article argues that assessment is learning and explores how formative approaches to evaluation at a national level might be used to prevent countries repeating past mistakes.

Distance education enabled by e-learning is at the forefront of university participation in an increasingly connected world. Physical, temporal, cultural and educational borders are becoming both less rigid and less predictable than ever before. The authors suggest, in this article, that university distance elearning could and should allow universities to make a major contribution to lifelong learning in this networked world. However, just as lifelong learning and distance e-learning are subject to multiple interpretations and realisations, the role that universities might play in contributing to global lifelong learning is currently far from clear. Both distance education, as a mode of learning and teaching, and lifelong learning, as an aspiration and a policy, bring issues pertaining to the roles and values of universities into sharp focus. On the fluid, unpredictable landscape of global higher education are traced the imperatives driving distance e-learning and lifelong learning in order to discern the redrawing of borders that appears to be emerging. The parallels between unsettled territories and unresolved tensions in distance e-learning and lifelong learning will be highlighted. The authors suggest that distance e-learning could enable lifelong learning and that lifelong learning, broadly interpreted, should be a cornerstone of university strategy and activity in a world that is increasingly networked.