My research makes a contribution to the disciplines of science education and educational assessment. I am internationally recognised as a leader and innovator in the field of formative assessment. More specifically, my work is acknowledged as contributing to theory and practice in classroom assessment, particularly in the ways that teachers conceptualise assessment practices and purposes and enact them in the classroom. Within this, my work has made two distinctive contributions: (i) mapping and exploring the beliefs, practices and perceptions of teachers as they make changes in their assessment practices  and (ii) knowledge transfer  I have published widely in academic journals and books and through other media to disseminate research findings to policy makers, educational leaders, teachers and student teachers. Consequently, my research has had an impact in academic, policy and professional settings

My PhD explored the assessment practices of two science teachers and analysed how their pedagogy changed as they strengthened the feedback evidence from their students.  This work led to my first funded research project. This was the King’s-Medway-Oxfordshire-Formative Assessment Project(KMOFAP)  This investigated assessment for learning practices in science, English and mathematics classrooms and explored how teachers were  implementing the research findings from the review completed by Black & Wiliam in 1998. My role, in this project, was to devise a way of working with teachers and schools to help them understand the implications of the review findings and explore ways of helping them translate these ideas into their practice  Several studies and consultancies were developed from this work   and the collaborative action research approach that I designed and constructed in these early projects, has formed the basis of much of the recent and current work that I do with teachers, including my two recent pan-European projects focused on inquiry-based learning in science . For assessment to function formatively, the results have to be used to adjust teaching and learning – so a significant aspect of any professional development programme will focus on how to support teachers to do this. Providing vignettes of practice, with narratives and explanations of such practice, allows teachers to understand the appropriate classroom climate and their role in this process.