I have come to the conclusion that the word assessment is not useful. Assessment for Learning, formative assessment, summative assessment are all just ways of moving learning forward. Anyway, I was inspired by this photo of Abi, a wonderful teacher in my department which I thought was a perfect image of real feedback so I set myself to try to think of a simile or metaphor to try and encapsulate different things which are all moving learning forward. This slide share is a first attempt. Comments welcome!