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Due to socio-political issues in Dutch society, citizenship education (CE) became obligatory by law in the Netherlands in 2006. Schools were to decide on their local CE curriculum. This contribution intends to open up the black box of school-based curriculum-making efforts for CE. It reports on a four-year study in four schools for secondary education. In each school, teachers designed (parts of) their CE curriculum with guidance during weekly coaching sessions. The central question is, what are the professional experiences and results of teachers who are involved in guided school-based CE curriculum-making? The qualitative data set comprised of interview and focus group data as well as artefacts such as CE-activities designed by teachers. Findings show teachers' preference for broad and integrated approaches to CE, and that teachers needed guidance not only to improve their CE-knowledge and design abilities, but also to increase their socio-political skills for school-wide implementation. These results are discussed in view of the current tendency in the Netherlands to define CE in a more centralised and content-specific manner and in doing so limiting the space for teachers as curriculum-makers.

Formative assessment is considered as one of the most effective interventions to support teacher decision-making and improve education and student learning. However, formative assessment does not always meet these expectations. In order to be effective, formative assessment activities should be consciously and coherently planned aligned with other aspects of the curriculum and the decisions teachers wish to make based on these activities. While there is sufficient support for teachers to design formative assessment activities, no guidelines exist to help them tie these different activities together in an effective way. To support teachers in designing formative assessment plans informing formative decision-making, this study focused on the creation of a set of design principles. These design principles for formative assessment plans were formulated based on expert interviews and subsequently evaluated by future users. The result is a set of eight design principles that can be used and validated in educational practice.