Editorial: Practitioner Research in Higher Education, 8 (1)

This issue of Practitioner Research in Higher Education arises from papers presented at the Assessment in Higher Education international conference which was held in Birmingham, England, in June 2013. This biannual conference covers a wide range of assessment issues including, design, engaging students in assessment, assessment for learning, feedback, grading, academic standards, technology and quality assurance systems. Many of these areas of interest include a focus on learning for both students and academic staff. This includes learning of key concepts and skills within the relevant subject discipline but also includes an element of assessment literacy and academic literacy. Increasingly within higher education programme teams are focusing effort on developing the assessment literacy of their students and this of course also has an impact on the professional learning of the academics involved. At a wider level the growing body of international research on assessment in higher education provides a useful evidence base for policy makers, institutional leaders, heads of department, programme leaders and individual lecturers. A powerful method for engaging with this evidence base is for individual lecturers and especially programme teams to adopt practitioner research approaches. Many of the papers presented at the conference and in this issue of the journal are part of this drive for change in assessment practice through practitioner research.