“Assessment and Good Teaching”

This article has three purposes. First, it makes the case for assessment as an educational practice that flows from the core concerns of a school, in this piece particularly seminaries and theological schools. Second, it describes practices that enable assessment to be a resource for achieving the quality everyone wants from an educational and formational program. Finally, it concludes with comments about building a "culture for assessment" so that it becomes a normative practice in how a school goes about the work of education and formation. This article will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming book Educating Leaders for Ministry, which is a collection of essays from the work of the 1996–2000 Keystone Conferences of Roman Catholic seminaries, funded by Lilly Endowment Inc.