The project aims to contribute in improving professional standards of secondary teachers by supporting them to conduct assessment for formative reasons and become more effective in terms of promoting student learning outcomes (cognitive and meta-cognitive). To achieve this purpose, the project aims to:

1. Develop a comprehensive framework for measuring teachers’ assessment skills and use this framework to define professional standards in formative assessment.
2. Establish valid instruments to measure teachers’ professional needs and use these instruments to develop a Teacher Professional Development (TPD) course on assessment based on the main assumptions of the Dynamic Approach (DA). This approach recognises the importance of involving teachers in critical reflection upon their practice and supporting them to develop and implement their own improvement strategies and action plans. These action plans address the professional needs of each group of teachers and should take into account the main findings of research on formative assessment.
3. Evaluate the impact of this DA course on improving teachers’ assessment skills and on promoting student learning outcomes in mathematics (cognitive and meta-cognitive).
4. Search for any differential effects of this DA course in terms of student background factors (prior-achievement and socioeconomic status [SES]) and exploring possibilities of using this intervention for promoting not only quality but also equity.
5. Generate policy guidelines for promoting formative assessment (including policy on TPD) and encouraging policy makers not only to reform their assessment policies but also to establish mechanisms to support teachers in their attempt to conduct assessment for formative reasons

Generally, this project aims to promote innovation in secondary education by encouraging the systematic use of authentic assessment techniques in mathematics for formative reasons (including Student Self-Assessment) that can help students identify learning needs and take actions to address these needs. To achieve this aim, we build on sharing research findings and experiences from evaluating relevant policy initiatives in different European countries which consider important formative assessment but their practices are still outcome oriented. This cooperation does not only help us produce policy guidelines and a TPD course but also to evaluate this intervention by offering the TPD course to teachers in each participating country and identifying strengths and weaknesses of the proposed course. We also evaluate the impact of this intervention on promoting assessment skills of teachers in different countries and through that on promoting cognitive and meta-cognitive learning outcomes in different countries.

One can therefore argue that this project intends to promote innovation in education through cooperation of eight organizations in four European countries (i.e., Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, and the Netherlands) at both the policy and practice level. These four countries have been chosen on the basis of their particularities in educational context, assessment policies and assessment tradition, which may allow us to examine the special challenges faced when promoting formative assessment. Namely, educational systems such as those in Belgium and the Netherlands that are more summative oriented in terms of their assessment policies due to the streaming of students may show more resistance to methods of formative assessment. On the other hand, Cyprus and Greece have systems of mixed ability classrooms and lack an organised national assessment policy.

Finally, the project purposes to support policy makers in different countries to reform their policies on assessment through not only generating policy guidelines that are based on a critical analysis of the national policy of each country but also by supporting them to implement this policy and especially helping them to deliver the TPD course and deal with challenges that may arise during the implementation of the intervention phase. Therefore, the project aims to empower key stakeholders (i.e., policy makers with key roles in assessment, school advisors and teachers) in their attempt to promote formative assessment in secondary mathematics.