Abstract
Many studies have identified the importance of distributed leadership as a potential contributor to positive change and school improvement. Marking moderation is an important quality assurance process to check marking consistency ensuring the validity and reliability of allocated marks (Mahmud and Sanderson, 2011; Sadler, 2013). A key value of marking moderation is how the mark is agreed upon through discussion and collaboration (Sadler, 2013), as a result, this can be a valuable source of both informal and formal professional development. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether Transnational partners appreciate the value of moderation practices as it is often observed as a box-ticking exercise where little time has been invested in developing a shared understanding of assessments and marking standards among module teams. This has a far-reaching impact on students as sound marking and moderation are fundamental to student experience and success. Our project therefore takes an action research approach (Altrichter et al., 1993) following the distributed leadership theory and aiming to enhance collaborative marking by engaging TNE colleagues via pre-marking meetings to enhance the quality of marking and to develop competencies in partners’ academic staff.