Schooling and professional development programs.

A number of participants reported the influence of schooling on their beliefs and practices about assessment. Mona, for example, being educated in public schools in which formal assessment constituted a large part of students’ grade point averages (GPAs), viewed assessment as tests perhaps because those metrics affected her as a student. Mona, for example, said that such assessments placed major stress on her as a student and that that experience made her consider not depending solely on formal assessment in her practices, but this goal could not be achieved.

Excerpt 44: Ninety percent of my education—I was taught in public schools and I would say the majority, if not all forms of assessment were formal, so they were paper-based. I think they placed a lot of stress on students, and that definitely made me more aware of this. So I don’t believe that students should be

assessed a 100% formally. I do believe that part of it should be done informally, and graded as well. So that you would check their understanding because this is language use and sometimes there are stress factors. That’s one thing, another thing for my master’s, I was actually being tested on formally and informally of my understanding, and I actually scored better, yeah because the stress relief, the stress factor was much lower at that percentage. So yes, it definitely changed my perceptions and beliefs. (Mona, II)

She emphasized stress as a significant factor that influenced her assessment beliefs. Thus, it seems that she had been influenced negatively by formal paper-based assessments when she was a student in public schools; she compared this with her experience in her master’s degree phase when she had better familiarity with informal assessments. As such, Mona seems to employ various informal assessment methods in an attempt to introduce students to them.

Latifa also reported the influence of her undergraduate education on her assessment practices. She perceived assessment as grades when she was a student, which is perhaps why she labeled graded tasks as assessments. She referred to her public schooling when comparing the assessment system between her country and the assessment education studies she did for her master’s degree in the UK. She stated,

Excerpt 45: In the UK, it was [a] different [system of assessment] because we didn’t have tests. Before you do your thesis, you have courses, and in these courses, you do like ten pages of research, like a report, and that’s the only thing that you get graded on. (Latifa, II)

She added that the test construction basics she studied in her undergraduate period had affected her teaching and that she had applied the tips when she wrote the tests. Indeed, her tests contained a variety of questions, yet the format and the questions were similar to those of other participants. For example, her test had four sections, as did those of all the other participants, and the questions were similar (e.g., multiple choice, matching words with references). Thus, the institution’s context and policy may have had a stronger impact than her schooling.

Dana also stated that her schooling influenced “what kind of teacher” she currently was in that she used the same teaching strategies as her own teachers had. She pointed out that she studied in private schools in which English was used as the medium of instruction. In private schools, students acquire English through communication and are not taught grammar explicitly. Accordingly, she preferred to teach grammar the same way and she planned to teach students grammar through writing. However, her answers on how her schooling influenced her practice were not related specifically to assessment but teaching. And, as opposed to what she mentioned about the methods of teaching grammar in private schools, the activities I observed did not focus on writing. I did not observe students writing essays or learning grammar through the

communicative approach. Her approach to teaching was similar to her colleagues at the CBE. She followed the traditional method in terms of explaining the rules and then answering tasks with students. The students were mostly recipients of information, even though she placed them in groups. And, as mentioned before, she reminded them during most of the assessment activities that these were tasks that would be included on the tests. Her tests also did not include many writing sections, and the sections that required writing were only short-answer ones. It seems that her experience in the LC influenced her practice more than her schooling.

The participants also reported the influence of the professional development programs on their assessment beliefs and practices. Two participants, Najla and Mona, have a certificate from CELTA. Mona described the influence of CELTA in detail, but she related it more to her

teaching than to her assessment practices. In the initial interview, she described CELTA as having a huge influence on her teaching practices, although she did not mention assessment specifically:

Excerpt 46: [CELTA] did highly influence my practice, as well as my beliefs, because for me it felt like it was a very strong basic foundation that I really needed because my BA was purely about linguistics. I haven’t had any courses in teaching or in education. So that I believe it was a very good foundation. It talked about so many different aspects of teaching and learning, things like teaching the basic skills, how to avoid the most common mistakes teachers make unintentionally, how to deal with students, how to

encourage them, things like very good tips on teaching, how to plan lessons, how to plan and decide on curriculum. Some psychological aspects of encouraging students—when to correct their mistakes and when not. Assessment—we took very basic assessment information, because it was mostly dedicated to teaching and learning rather than assessing. (Mona, PI)

Even though CELTA is a training course in language teaching rather than language assessment, as she pointed out, it appears that most of Mona’s assessment practices were gained from CELTA, such as asking short-answer questions and peer assessment. However, in Excerpt 46, when Mona described what CELTA taught her, she included practices that she thought were part of teaching, but in fact could be a part of formative assessment, such as teachers’ assessing their own methods (e.g., “how to avoid the most common mistakes teachers make unintentionally”) and providing feedback (e.g., “psychological aspects of encouraging students: when to correct their mistakes and when not”).

Najla did not describe the influence of the professional development programs in as much detail as Mona, but she indicated the need for more professional programs to be conducted in the LC:

Excerpt 47: So if [the language center has] a proper way of [instructing us] the steps of standard assessment, by giving maybe a lecture or a class, then I would kind of see what it am I doing in my teaching, and then how is that applicable. (Najla, PI)

Excerpt 48: I think that would definitely help us to improve how we’re gonna write exams, and also help in trying to focus on the objectives to kind of have better objectives of a course. I can generally speak about the objectives in relation to themes; for example, in reading, and in writing, but again I don’t think I’m able [to assess] what kind of skills [students] are leaving my course with. I think to do that, I would need a proper assessment, someone who has really studied assessment. (Najla, PI)

In both instances, Najla stated that assessment training programs could significantly improve teaching. Again, she did not perceive training programs as improving assessment strategies. Nevertheless, she implied that she did not know how to assess language skills and that she needed to learn more about constructing exams. She did not refer to CELTA as having had an impact on her assessment or teaching practices; she stated only that she had learned how to prepare lesson plans.