Educational assessment in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan

This chapter presents the educational assessment development of three different Chinese contexts which share the same Confucian heritage. Two thousand years ago saw an early form of examinations in China. These kinds of examinations were mainly used for selecting people to different government offices. Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan followed this trend and were traditionally very examination-oriented. Around the turn of the twenty-first century, there was an international calling to use assessment for learning in addition to the other functions of selection and accountability. All three places responded enthusiastically and pushed ahead with large-scale wide-ranging assessment reforms, though each implemented these in their own distinctive ways. Research into the assessment practices in the classroom showed that there were many gaps between the intentions and the outcomes of these reforms. This chapter points out that teachers are a key element for successful implementation of assessment reforms and therefore deserve careful consideration when developing the implementation strategy. Copyright © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V..