This study features a collection of eight case studies of exemplary cases from secondary schools as well as international literature reviews and policy analysis related to formative assessment – the frequent assessments of student progress to identify learning needs and shape teaching.  It examines such issues as benefits and barriers for using formative assessment, policy frameworks and implications, and formative assessment in practice.  Achievement gains attributed to formative assessment are reported as being quite high,...

Isaiah Berlin’s response to the Soviet Union was central to his identity, both personally and intellectually. Born a Russian subject in Riga in 1909, he spoke Russian as a child and witnessed both revolutions in St. Petersburg in 1917, emigrating to the West in 1921. He first returned to Russia in 1945, when he met the writers Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak. These formative encounters helped shape his later work, especially his defense of political freedom and his studies of pre-Soviet Russian thinkers.