Margaret Heritage is an independent consultant in education. For her entire career, her work has spanned both research and practice.  In addition to spending many years in her native England as a practitioner, a university teacher, and an inspector of schools, she had an extensive period at UCLA, first as Principal of the Laboratory School of the Graduate School of Education and then as Assistant Director at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST). She has also worked at WestEd as a Senior Scientist with Program Services and at Stanford University.

Christine Harrison is a lecturer at King's College, London. She worked in secondary schools for 13 years before joining King's to run the Biology Education section. Her teaching and research have centered on assessment, science education, cognitive acceleration, and the use of text and TV in classrooms. In 1998 she began work on of the King's-Medway-Oxfordshire Formative Assessment Project (KMOFAP), where she developed action research work with science and mathematics teachers to help them focus on and improve their formative practice. Throughout all of these, she has maintained an interest in professional learning, in working collaboratively with teachers, and in ensuring effective knowledge transfer.