Communication and Collaboration: The Heart of Coherent Policy and Practice in New Zealand Assessment

Abstract

Educational policy formation is the result of multiple influences, locally and internationally, with power struggles amongst political, economic, academic, practitioner, and local cultural contexts. Various theories abound regarding the international flow and influence of educational policies, such as ‘borrowing,’ ‘lending,’ ‘travelling,’ and ‘knowledge transfer.’ This chapter argues that ‘policy adaptation’ is the more pertinent term because policies generally mutate from one setting to another. Two examples of New Zealand policy enactment in formative assessment, one related to National Curriculum Exemplars and the other to National Standards, illustrate the centrality of clear communication and collaboration across all players in the educational sector, as well as responsiveness to the local political, economic, and cultural context for coherent policy and practice to occur. The examples demonstrate the role all players can and need to take in shaping policy. Indeed coherent policies that meet the greatest challenge of all—implementation in practice—can only occur through extensive collaboration and communication.