Professor Stobart is Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment (OUCEA) and Emeritus Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, University College London. He has worked in education as a teacher, psychologist, policy researcher and academic. His expertise is in assessment, with much of his recent work focusing on Assessment for Learning. After teaching for eight years in secondary schools in Africa and Inner London he retrained, and worked, as an Educational Psychologist. This led to a Fulbright Scholarship in the USA, where he gained a PhD for research into the integration of special needs students in mainstream classrooms. Returning to the UK he worked as an assessment researcher for 20 years, firstly with an exam board and then with government agencies. These posts led to wide experience with assessment policy and the development of national qualifications and assessments. His move to the University of London Institute of Education provided the opportunity to further develop his work on the formative role of assessment. As a founder member of the Assessment Reform Group he has worked for over twenty years on developing Assessment for Learning, an approach which now has international recognition. At the same time he was involved in research projects which studied the impact of policy, particularly on teachers. These included a longitudinal study of variations in teacher effectiveness (the VITAE project), evaluations of government strategies in England and Scotland, and the impact of changes in assessment policy (ARIA project). His current focus is on how expertise develops and the implications for classroom teaching and learning. Much of his current professional work involves working with teachers on classroom teaching and learning – and the role formative assessment plays in this.