The role of an expansive workplace in the schoolwide adoption of a new assessment framework in English primary schools

Recent changes to English national assessment policy have resulted in primary school leaders adopting new frameworks to evaluate pupil progress. This study examines the role of expansive workplace characteristics and staff meetings to support teachers to change their assessment practice at a schoolwide level, following engagement with a new framework. One hundred in-service teachers who had used the framework rated their schools against expansive workplace criteria in an online survey. They also rated staff meetings to support their use of the framework against effective meeting criteria. Statistical analysis of these data demonstrated expansive workplace characteristics were more frequently linked to participants’ subsequent reports of schoolwide changes to assessment practice than the characteristics of meetings held to support them. It is argued that expansive workplace characteristics might better enable the social learning processes entailed in schoolwide changes to an aspect of practice, such as discussion between colleagues, than the staff meetings intended to support a resource’s use.