259 / 2018-04-15 23:41:13

How literate are teachers in Goa in assessment? Questionnaire survey analysis and beyond

language assessment literacy,issues in questionnaire survey

全体主题 > Principles and methodology of developing standards for language assessment

For the purpose of this paper, Assessment Literacy (AL) is defined as a basic understanding of educational assessment and related skills to apply such knowledge to various measures of student achievement. This presentation is based on the premise that teachers are key agents in educational assessment and that their understanding and practice of assessment is located in their cultural and social context in which they work. Further, depending on the kind and amount of washback external high-stakes tests have on teaching and learning in their context, they make professional decisions about assessment in response to various factors that may facilitate or hinder their practices.

This study was conducted in Goa, India, as part of a project being carried out in Macau and Goa, both former Portuguese colonies for hundreds of years. The questionnaire was in a Likert scale format and was administered to about 500 teachers of Hindi, English, Marathi, Konkani and Portuguese online and face-to-face in about 90 schools. As we make sense of the data in the context of Goa schools, some interesting insights have emerged that we are trying to understand and share at the AALA conference.

As part of the process of familiarizing teachers with the purpose, content and format of the survey we realized that one-on-one conversations and focus group discussions where possible, yielded deeper and more interesting information about teachers’ current understanding of assessment and the assessment practices they engage in. Even though we filled in the questionnaires for many teachers after sufficient explanation about what we were getting at, it was when we engaged in in-depth interviews that several of the social, cultural and micro/macro school/assessment issues came to surface that gave us a holistic picture of their AL. The preliminary findings are: (1) Contrary to what initial questionnaire data reveals, many teachers do engage in a variety of assessments using different activities in the classroom, and are aware of ethical issues involved in assessment; (2) Most often teachers considered only those tasks as assessment tasks if the Board mandated it; very often they were unaware that they were doing formative assessment or were hesitant to acknowledge it; (3) Class tests however matched those of the Board’s summative tests; (4) The teachers’ AL was probably not at a level as to make the questionnaire a viable tool.

We will discuss the implications this study has for assessment research methodology and assessment training.