Where teachers assess their students' work for high-stakes purposes, their judgements are standardised through professional discussions with their colleagues - a process often known as internal moderation. This process is important to the reliability of results as any inconsistencies in the marking standards applied by different teachers within a school department can be problematic.

This research used interviews, a questionnaire and observations of mock internal moderation sessions to explore internal moderation practices in the context of school-based work contributing to high-stakes assessments. Teachers' discussions focused on the location and sufficiency of relevant evidence in student work. This, along with reference to the mark scheme and discussing the meaning of assessment criteria, is consistent with Cook and Brown's (1999) notion of tacit knowledge being made explicit and helping to create and refine ways of knowing. Thus, internal moderation acts as professional development for teachers as well as providing quality assurance. Around a quarter of teachers appear not to have opportunities to participate in internal moderation. Moderation by teachers is reported to be infrequently influenced by group dynamics, is thought to remove any personal bias, and teachers tended to report that the process worked well.