Owning their learning: using ‘Assessment for Learning' to help students assume responsibility for planning, (some) teaching and evaluation

Robin Conway's interest in student led enquiry derived from a concern to encourage his students to take much more responsibility for their own learning. Here he explains how his department gradually learned to entrust students with defining the enquiry questions and planning the kinds of teaching and learning activities to be used over the course of their final Key Stage 3 unit on the Holocaust.

Although the process is undoubtedly daunting, he argues that the risk is well worth taking; and his account demonstrates how all students can play a full part in such a process, learning not only how to set shared lesson objectives or individual targets for their final assessment, but also how to evaluate the appropriateness of those objectives and the quality of their learning...