221 / 2018-04-13 09:50:36

Criteria for Teachers’ Formative Assessment Practice: Development and Validation

development; validation; assessment criteria; formative assessment practice

全体主题 > Standards in developing language assessments

Under the high pressure of Gaokao in China, many Chinese English teachers in middle schools teach for test, although formative assessment has been recommended by government. The alternative assessment improves learners’ learning autonomy, motivation, confidence, strategies and competence (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall & Wiliam 2003). The theoretical explanation, however, can’t help much to alter teachers’ daily instruction and progress their assessment literacy, they need extra practice to internalize the theory and principles (Xu & Brown 2016). The present research, therefore, intends to develop and validate the assessment criteria. To be specific, the following research questions will be explored in the study:

1. Can the assessment criteria produce consistent rating results of candidates’ performance?
2. What is the construct validity of the assessment criteria?
3. What is the washback of the assessment criteria?

Formative assessment is to solve three learning questions: where the learner is going, where the learner is right now and how to get there. Together with the questions, Wiliam and Thompson (2007) integrated three agents (teachers, peers, and learners), and then created a five-aspect formative assessment framework. The five modules are fundamental classroom strategies including learning intention, learning elicitation, feedback providing, peer learning and learning ownership, which guide the effective manipulation of the classroom activities. Under the framework the assessment criteria in present study were developed

The criteria were designed with the cooperation of the researcher and other eight group members, who were firstly asked to familiarize themselves with the five-aspect formative assessment framework and then design one version of classroom assessment criteria in pairs. Further discussion was held to share the understanding and reach agreement within the group.

After the design, two teachers were asked to prepare for their public classes (to be done), which will be video recorded, scored, analyzed and discussed. The discussion process will be recorded to get primary answers to Research Questions 2 and 3. The scores will be compared to get the rater consistency.

Following that, some adjustment will be made to reach the final version, which will be applied by about 300 hundred teachers as a part of English teacher training after they watch one teaching video. In addition, they will be required to fill in a short questionnaire to answer the three questions. The two presenters and several students will be interviewed after three months to survey the washback of formative assessment.

The rating scores will be computed via SPSS to investigate the inter rater reliability. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis will be employed to validate the construct of assessment criteria. Interview data will be analyzed to find out the washback and questionnaire data are to triangulation validate the research results.