Designing and validating a potential assessment inventory for assessing ELTs’ assessment literacy

Abstract

English teachers' assessment literacy has always been considered as an important factor in their performance. However, no instrument has ever been developed to assess this construct among Iranian EFL teachers. To fill this gap, in the first phase of the present study a theoretical framework for the main four components of teacher assessment literacy, named validity, reliability, interpretability of the results, and efficiency, was developed through extensive review of the related literature and conducting interviews with PhD candidates of TEFL. In the second phase, a questionnaire was developed and piloted with 150 participants who took part in the study through the rules of convenience sampling. More specifically, the 30 items of the newly-developed “ELTs’ Assessment Literacy” questionnaire were subjected to factor analysis which revealed the presence of all the four components consisting of different number of items. These phases led to the development of a questionnaire with four components and 25 items on the basis of a five point Likert scale that measured: (1) “Validity” including six items, (2) “Reliability” including ten items, (3) “Interpretability of the Results” including eight item, and (4) “Efficiency” including five items. The findings of this study may shed lights on this subject and help researchers and teaching practitioners assess EFL teachers’ assessment literacy and make principled decisions as far as assessment is concerned.

A review of teachers’ assessment literacy proficiency measures

“…The target population of the measures is primarily concentrated on the in-service teachers, and only three of them include pre-service teachers as participants [23], [26], [28]. Furthermore, teachers in higher education receive little attention with only two instruments designed to examine their AL proficiency level [27], [29]. More regrettably, teachers in pre-school education are still under-explored and more attention is deserved to develop the corresponding AL measures in accordance with the different assessment requirements.…”

“…The second type is the Likert-scale questionnaire. Five questionnaires are listed: Assessment Literacy Survey (ALS) [26], Questionnaire for Assessment Literacy (QAL) [27], Approaches to Classroom Assessment Instrument (ACAI) [28], English Language Teachers' Assessment Literacy (ELTAL) [29], and Performance Assessment Literacy (PAL) [1]. In the last category, the survey with the inclusion of both test and questionnaire is labeled as the Questionnaire for Measurement Literacy (QML) [30].…”

“…More recently, based on the review of related literature and interview with professional, Nikmard and Zenouzagh [29] developed and validated a 30-item AL questionnaire targeting English language teachers only. Although it was labeled as an AL questionnaire, it focused more on examining the assessment knowledge of English teachers.…”

Virtual Assessment in English Language Teaching during COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges and Considerations in Bangladesh Perspectives

“…And most of the participants preferred close-ended and interview/ viva type question format for online assessment, for Chen et al, (2020); Coombe et al, (2020) also suggest setting close-ended items in assessments for its proven benefits. Another study reveals that viva and interview-type assessments are effective and valid because no unfair means is possible in such tests (Ghanbari & Barati, 2020;Nikmard & Mohamadi Zenouzagh, 2020). The study Saleem et al (2021) shows that the participants in closed-ended assessments are very anxious about unintended submissions, automatic answers, and cheating.…”

Novice English teachers’ knowledge about assessment of learning, assessment for learning, and assessment as learning

“…It is because the minimum assessment literacy could not lead the teacher to help the students to achieve the maximum results of their performance (Nurdiana, 2020). The same opinion comes from Nikmard and Zenouzagh (2020), who stated that one of the important factors in English teaching is the teachers' assessment literacy. However, the preliminary situational analysis in forms of observation and informal interview found that the teachers' assessment literacy is limited to formative and summative assessment.…”