Learning together about accessible assessment for learning in secondary ELA and mathematics

Making Assessment for Learning (AfL) practices accessible to students and teachers offers a powerful lever for advancing equity as a priority. This paper examines professional learning where teachers shared their inquiries into making success criteria more accessible for students, working with colleagues in networks that traversed discipline and system boundaries. English Language Arts and mathematics teachers discussed practice-based evidence, the likely effects of AfL and disciplinary variability. They planned individual adaptations to suit their contexts, articulating improvement aims researchers formalised into collections of accessible AfL theories of action. Videos of practice were effective coherence artefacts that travelled across usually firm boundaries of discipline and schooling systems through facilitated discussions, enabling educators to notice impact and refine practices to amplify what they believed was meaningful. This process, by which teachers learned to make AfL more actionable and accessible, is scalable and contributes to the theory and practice of equity-oriented assessment.