To further understand the cultural practice of silence with respect to formative
assessment, research (e.g. Lee Hang 2011) was informed by theorising teaching and formative
assessment as a cultural practice, within the wider theorising of a sociocultural
perspective (Bell 2011), meaning that to explain and make sense of the practices of
assessment for formative purposes, we need to make links between mind and action, and
between these elements and the sociocultural contexts in which formative assessment is
done (Wertsch 1991). In other words: