Reflection in Practice Management (PM) favoured the integrated approach where learners had to critically reflect on the study material, assessments and tasks throughout the year and to integrate their experiences in a meaningful manner that would demonstrate their development and learning over the year. Reflection in the form of portfolios focused on personal development and individual learning rather than on achieving a general set of course outcomes. But assessment of these portfolios revealed no real evidence of reflection or critical thinking. This study suggested that learners be assessed orally so that their reflections could come alive and so that the educator could learn from the assessment to restructure or re-curriculate where necessary. This study found that although the orals were not a preferred form of assessment, they contributed successfully to informing the written critical and reflective thinking in the portfolios. Using an action research approach, enabled us to not only address a fundamental problem that the educators and learners were battling with-how to encourage and indeed teach learners to think critically and to reflect, but it also showed the educators how to solve problems or seek solutions to didactic problems in their own classrooms. The recommendations in this paper may therefore inform courses other than PM that use reflective practice, critical thinking or portfolio assessments.

This article is about the use of oral assessment for learning and was based on a reflection-in-and-on-action approach within a participatory action research framework. The purpose of this paper was to argue for the incorporation of oral assessment in tertiary science as a fair, reliable and valid approach to assessment. This study found that the interactive nature of the oral assessments led to improved learning of content for learners from their peers and assessors. Assessors too learnt about their students as individuals, their study habits and critiqued their teaching from the oral assessments. They also learned from their co-assessors. Valuable lessons were learned for collaborative team teaching and assessing for the benefit of assessors and learners alike. This study also found that action research afforded the assessors a new way of doing things empowering them to conduct research in their own classrooms, with their colleagues and their learners.

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Globally, higher education institutions are constantly challenged to respond to changes in the political, social, economic, environment and other sectors in terms of their teaching practices. But, are tertiary institutions responding adequately and appropriately to these challenges in terms of Biological Sciences, their applications and their effect on the environment? The purpose of this paper is to discuss an instruction and assessment strategy in Biology to enhance eco-education. This paper is based on a study that recognises the significance and impact of education and (by implication) assessment in Biological Sciences on the environment. This paper therefore reports on an oral assessment intervention in Biology at two tertiary institutions in South Africa based on "practical activities and first hand experience" emphasized by The 1975 Belgrade and Tbilisi international agreements (UNESCO-UNEP 1976, 1978). Grounded in a social-constructivist framework, this qualitative study located learning and assessment in Biology within the framework of situated learning which focused on the construction and assessment of knowledge within the learner's community of practice.