Exploring teachers’ attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs for implementing student self-assessment of English as a foreign language writing

Abstract

With the growing need to nurture students’ independent learning, English language teaching (ELT) practices should reflect student-centered assessment approaches, such as self-assessment, an ultimate goal of higher education. It has been pointed out that to conduct effective self-assessment, students need to be taught systematically, and that is where teachers are expected to step in. Prior to implementing such a change in ELT, it is important to conduct research on English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ attitudes toward, and self-efficacy beliefs about, implementing self-assessment to cultivate capable student self-assessors. Although the strong global endorsement of self-assessment over the past two decades has witnessed its classroom implementation in different disciplines, such studies are scant in relation to EFL writing classrooms. To address this gap, the present qualitative research examined five Chinese tertiary EFL writing teachers’ attitudes toward and self-efficacy beliefs about student self-assessment of writing, as well as possible reasons that discourage them from engaging students in self-assessment practices. Data collected from in-depth, semi-structured interviews indicated that self-assessment, a critical element of self-regulated learning, is surprisingly missing from the teachers’ knowledge base and previous practices. Additionally, the findings offer insights into the striking differences in teachers’ understanding of, attitudes toward, and low self-efficacy beliefs about self-assessment of writing. Reasons why teachers choose not to implement self-assessment of writing are also discussed. Findings from this study contribute to a deeper understanding of how EFL teachers’ attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs are enacted in relation to their classroom assessment practices in order to move forward discussions on the feasibility of implementing self-assessment of writing in tertiary EFL classrooms.

The Application of Language Proficiency Scales in Education Context: A Systematic Literature Review

“…New teaching models based on LPS were also adopted to improve learning confidence and outcomes (Shi & Zheng, 2021;Xiong & Liu, 2020;Zhong, 2019). Students used LPS as a benchmark to provide feedback from their self-assessments, track their progress, and set learning goals (He & Zhang, 2021;Li, 2022;Zhang & Wang, 2022). The intervention of LPS in learning could help cultivate self-regulated learners and enhance students' motivation and learning outcomes.…”

“…Table 6 reveals how students used CSE. Zhang and Wang (2022) explored the scaffolding role of the CSE writing scale in college students. Results showed that with the intervention of CSE, students' assessing ability, writing skills, and learning confidence were significantly improved.…”

“…Generally, students used LPS as self-or peer-assessment tools and the goal-setting benchmark. Self-assessment based on LPS plays a scaffolding role in learning, and improved students' language proficiency, assessment literacy, and confidence (Zhang & Wang, 2022). When integrated into learning, LPS improves the efficacy of self-and peer-evaluation, enhances students' self-regulation, and boosts the value of assessment for learning (Li, 2022).…”

Contributions and controversies of self-assessment to the development of writing skill

“…On the whole, self-assessment has both strengths and weaknesses. It improves learning and it is a means to understand better for what purpose the students are doing and have done a given activity or work (Zhang, 2021). With regard to the weaknesses, there are doubts that some students may not be able to pinpoint their strong and weak aspects of their work (Gazza et al, 2018).…”

Sustaining Learners’ Writing Development: Effects of Using Self-Assessment on Their Foreign Language Writing Performance and Rating Accuracy

“…False self-assessment could possibly lead to students' inaccurate understandings of their abilities, learning outcomes, and curricular expectations in the assessment process, and, over the last three decades, there has been increasing research investigating the role of self-assessment in writing at different learning levels, as self-assessment and writing performance are deemed to be as closely associated with one another [5,10,21]. Nevertheless, it is surprising to find that research on the effects of using self-assessment in the EFL contexts has not been sufficiently documented, especially in the domain of tertiary writing [29]. For instance, in western contexts, most research about student self-assessment focuses on the elementary or the secondary level [11], and empirical research on self-assessment conducted in tertiary EFL writing classrooms has received limited attention.…”