New Zealand teachers’ conceptions of the purpose of assessment : phenomenographic analyses of teachers' thinking

This study adopted a qualitative approach to investigate teacher conceptions of assessment and sought to answer the question: What qualitatively different conceptions of assessment are held by New Zealand teachers of years 5-10? As this question deals with variation in conceptions, a phenomenographic approach (Marton, 1981, 1986; Marton & Booth, 1997) was selected to investigate this question.