Research Question 2: How do Korean primary school English teachers perceive the
implementation of their classroom-based assessment?
Ⅴ.3.1.Teachers’ principles of assessment
This section investigates the principles which inform the teachers’ practice when they carry out their assessments of students’ progress and their achievements in the classroom; this relates to the extent to which they believe in the propositions presented below. These propositions stem from the theoretical arguments put forward in this study (see, Ⅲ 4.4). The overall results of the implementation stage show that the teachers generally perceived all the propositions presented in the questionnaire to be part of their own assessment principles.
Items Propositions Mean SD
Q19 Teachers should explicitly instruct the students how to do the assessment
(tasks). 4.73 .471
Q24 Assessment (tasks) processes should be completed within a manageable
time considering the given context. 4.50 .589
Q20 Students should understand the desired outcome of the assessment (tasks). 4.28 .746 Q18 Teachers should inform the students of the reasons why they are being
assessed. 4.19 .744
Q22 Teachers should provide students with an opportunity to monitor their
Q23 Teachers should give students immediate feedback after they complete
each assessment (task). 3.97 .926
Q21 N=86
Students should be supported when they have a problem hindering their
completing the assessment (tasks). 3.94 .938
Table3.1: Teachers’ beliefs in the implementation stage
Table 3.1 above shows which propositions (Propositions 19 & 24) reflect the principles which received the strongest support from the teachers; it is these that are the most likely to be carried through into classroom-based assessment. In addition, the teachers also recognize other propositions as solid principles of classroom-based assessment. Thus, these results might indicate overall that the teachers fully understand what to do and how to do it when they perform their work in the implementation stage of the classroom-based assessment.
V. 3.2.Teachers’ practice reflecting their assessment principles
Table 3.2 shows how the teachers actually carried out their planned assessment; and how they managed assessment activities while the students were addressing given tasks. In most cases, they did act in accordance with their beliefs; the degree of agreement between teachers’ beliefs and their actions is higher than is indicated at the other stages.
Items Propositions Mean SD
Q19 I explicitly instruct the students how to do the assessment (tasks). 4.48 .627 Q24 Assessment (tasks) processes are completed within a manageable time
considering the given context. 4.28 .697
Q20 Students understand the desired outcome of the assessment (tasks). 3.94 .845 Q18 I inform the students of the reasons why they are being assessed. 3.88 .926 Q22 I provide students with an opportunity to monitor their own work while they
are performing the assessment (tasks). 3.73 .900
Q21 Students are supported when they have a problem hindering their
completing the assessment (tasks). 3.64 1.08
Q23 I give students immediate feedback after they complete each assessment
N=86
Table 3.2: Teachers’ practice in the implementation stage
Propositions were all, to some extent, found to be applicable to what the teachers actually did as regards their students’ assessment. However, within this stage, giving immediate feedback (Proposition 23) appeared to be less of a feature of their assessment practice when it was compared with the other propositions; that is, although the teachers sometimes provided some sort of feedback, they often did not see that it was incumbent on them to provide adequate and prompt feedback when implementing their assessment. Moreover, taking into account the fact that assessment principles should be operated systematically within the school curriculum, the irregular operation of proposition 23 might be worth noting as worthy of further investigation at this stage. This is reinforced by the fact that the gaps between the teachers’ beliefs and their practice with regard to proposition 23 was statistically significant at p<0.001 (see Appendix C). Accordingly, this is investigated further in the following section.
In addition, as explained in the previous section (V. 2.2), the results presented in Table 3.2 might be partly supported by reviewing the assessment specifications (see Appendix D) used in the classroom. They indicated that the participants seemed to keep to their principles; that is, they implemented their assessment as scheduled within the curriculum of the semester. In addition, a review of a number of the assessment tasks which were usually presented, and of the guidance provided in the paper (see also Appendix D), indicated that the students could easily understand what they were supposed to do, and what the teachers were expecting of them as Korean language instructions were provided
in the assessment tasks. It also indicated that the assessment tasks could be carried out within the time allocated either during the class or at a particular time after class.
Ⅴ.3.3.Fundamental aspects of the teachers’ assessment principles
Ⅴ.3.3.1.Concerns about validity
Assessment protocol:
Propositions 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, and 24 (Tables 3.1 & 3.2) focus on the assessors’ execution of the necessary steps in the assessment procedure which they should follow in order for it to be recognized that the way they administered their assessment was valid; this in turn leads to gaining valid results. The teachers perceived that they must help the students to understand why they are being assessed (Proposition 18). Eleven teachers argued that they as teachers explained why they implemented the assessment in detail and clearly; because of this, they believed, students participated in the assessment positively. For example:
Before implementing the assessment, I provided the students with a full enough explanation about the assessment and checked whether or not they recognized the reason why they participated in the assessment (Teacher Mansu Questionnaire 26).
What I have tried to do was to explain why I intended to implement the assessment. Another aim I had was to make the students understand the fact that assessment is necessary for their English learning (Teacher Subong Questionnaire 2).
learning; this is in line with the results of propositions 7 and 12 in Table 2.1 in that they considered assessment to be another opportunity for learning English.
In addition, the teachers strongly believed that they should provide the students with guides for completing the given tasks and show the students how to complete the given tasks (Proposition 19). For example, Teacher Baegun stated:
I am sure that I provide my students with the information they require to enable them to address the given tasks. That is, I normally instruct them how to do it. Sometimes, my students also ask me to explain how to do it when they are not sure what to do … (Questionnaire 4).
This indicates that assessment seems to be merged into the ordinary classroom activities. Moreover, the teachers believed that students should clearly understand the outcome of the assessment they were supposed to undertake (Proposition 20). Nine teachers responded that in the assessment plan, desired outcomes of the assessment were included; and that this was established at the beginning of the term and was given to the students and parents. For example, Teacher Suyang stated:
My school has a system of giving students and their parents, in advance, the details of a plan for assessment throughout the school; this helps them to prepare for it. This ‘statement of intent’ is provided to make clear what will be required of them (Questionnaire 1).
In addition, the teachers believed that the tasks must be manageable by the students within a reasonable period of class time (Proposition 24). For example, Teacher Songak mentioned:
I constructed my assessments focusing on what they could manage within an expected time. Had I not done this, I would not have been sure of completing the assessments scheduled (Questionnaire 32).
However, only a few teachers mentioned this issue when they were asked to complete Parts 2 and 4 of the questionnaire. This indicates that although the teachers think of this proposition as the language assessment principle which they should follow, they might not recognize it to be relevant to the assessment protocol; that is, they may not be familiar with the idea that certain necessary procedures themselves can be a part of validity in language assessment.
Likewise, the teachers believed that the students should receive an opportunity to monitor their work (Proposition 22). However, only a few teachers mentioned this issue when they were replying to the questions of Part 4. This indicates that the teachers were not aware that students’ self-monitoring was relevant to the validity of classroom-based assessment. Moreover the teachers believed that they should provide the students with immediate feedback when the students completed the tasks (Proposition 23). However, very few teachers mentioned this issue when replying to the question of validity; this might indicate that they have included the proposition as one of their classroom-based assessment principles, and recognize its necessity, but might not have confidence when
putting it into practice.
Ⅴ.3.3.2.Concerns about ethical aspects
The results regarding supporting students who have trouble completing the assessment tasks (Proposition 21 in Tables 3.1 & 3.2) show that even though its mean is quite high, yet it is still relatively low when it is compared with the means of other statements. There were a few teachers who, when replying to Part 4 of the questionnaire, argued that their assessment is ethical because the students received support from the teachers when they were in trouble when completing given tasks. This might indicate that they have embraced the proposition as one of their classroom-based assessment principles, and recognize its necessity, but might not be really confident about the ethics of what they are doing when putting it into practice.
Moreover, 5 teachers responded that they did not help the students while they were undertaking an assessment task because they thought it would be unfair if they had supported a particular student who had been in trouble. For example, Teacher Jangsu stated:
Assessment must be as fair as it can be; for this reason, I did not help the students who had difficulty implementing the given tasks. What I thought was that if I gave help to a particular student, I should have given the same help to all the other students (Questionnaire 70).
This indicates that there were a number of teachers who might be obsessed by a view that has long been held, that students should be assessed under exactly the same conditions as those that prevail when they take standardized paper and pencil tests.
V.3.4.The gaps between the teachers’ working principles and their practice
Table 3.2 has identified one assessment principle which is less frequently practiced by the teachers; it is analyzed and discussed as follows.
Proposition 23: I give students immediate feedback after they complete each assessment
(task).
The teachers recognized that they should give the students immediate feedback after they completed the given tasks (m=3.97 in Table 3.1); nevertheless, the teachers only moderately availed themselves of opportunities to participate in providing feedback when the opportunities presented themselves (m=3.47 in Table 3.2). The teachers interviewed mention three main reasons why they did not provide the students with immediate feedback: working conditions, the purpose of assessment, and quality of feedback.
Firstly, the teachers were concerned about their working conditions. For example, Teacher
Odae mentioned that:
I did not have enough time to manage the feedback. As an English subject teacher I could see the students in class but rarely saw them after class; this made it difficult to find a time to see them to give feedback regarding what they
had done in the assessment. In addition, I have too many students (Interview 11).
This indicates that most of the teachers were under time pressure as a result of insufficient time allocated to English teaching and assessment. Additional pressure was brought to bear on them because of the excessive numbers of students in their classes. In addition, the teachers took into account the purposes for which they carried out their assessment. Teacher Jiri mentioned that:
The idea is desirable… but practically it’s not easy. The reason is that after implementing the assessment, rather than giving immediate feedback to the students, I have usually kept the result of the assessment as material which I used for the purpose of reporting the students’ achievement at the end of the semester (Interview 3).
This indicates that the matter of giving immediate feedback might be influenced by the purpose of the assessment which teachers as assessors have in mind.
Finally, the teachers stated that the quality of feedback was also one of their considerations when they give the students immediate feedback.
I did not usually give the students immediate feedback regarding their implementation of the tasks mainly because I did not want to give them feedback in the form of clichés, such as good, and very good. I thought I should provide my students with in-depth, professional feedback which was fine tuned to each of them …. It takes time, anyway (Teacher Gaya Interview 16).
When using a task which required the students to verbalize something in English, I was reluctant to give immediate feedback because I was not often sure
whether or not I had accurately gauged the students’ oral abilities, so I usually did it once or twice more until I was sure of my decision… then I gave them feedback… (Teacher Mindung Interview 15).
This indicates that the teachers were concerned about the quality of their feedback as well as the practical conditions under which he was supposed to carry out the assessment.