| Teachers’ assessment literacy is an important issue in the field of educational evaluation. Moreover, educational evaluation reform becomes a hot issue in the context of China fundamental educational curriculum reform. To a large degree, the success of educational evaluation reform will depend on the teachers’ knowledge and skills in assessment and measurement. Therefore, Teachers’ assessment literacy level becomes a hot evaluation issue with the tide of reform. In China, according to literature review, there are not many researches on pre-service and in-service teachers’ assessment literacy training needs.The present study aimed at gaining an understanding of the difference of training needs of pre-service and in-service English teachers, their current background in the different areas of language testing and assessment, and the extent to which they had received training in these fields during their pre- and in-service education. The present study is a mixed-methods study that comprises both quantitative and qualitative data to investigate the perceived language assessment literacy training level and training need of pre-service and in-service middle school English teachers in Wuhan. The quantitative data was collected by a questionnaire survey of 103 in-service middle school English teachers and 109 pre-service English teachers who are majored in English or English education from normal universities and other comprehensive university and have just finished their internship in middle schools in Wuhan. And the qualitative data was collected through a follow-up study based on interviews with 15 pre-service teachers and 14 in-service teachers.It is found that the LTA literacy of pre-service and in-service teachers in Wuhan according to the participants is not very well-developed. There are no significant differences in the LTA training level of pre-service and in-service training level of the three aspects of LTA in the questionnaire, while there are significant differences in the training needs between pre-service and in-service teachers in the areas of using formative assessment, using portfolio assessment, establishing reliability of test/assessment, establishing validity of tests/assessment, using statics to study the quality of tests/ assessment.The majority of pre-service and in-service teachers believe that their training at either pre- or in-service level have not prepared them sufficiently for their work.There is a need for training with different priorities for content areas of LTA or the extent of training desired, depending on the assessment requirements of different educational contexts and the different period of teacher development. However, alternative assessment formats, such as self- or peer assessment, have been named as priorities for in-service teacher training according to the interview results. In addition, in this study, training in more conventional areas, such as the assessment of linguistic skills, writing test items of higher reliability and validity, modify ready made tests was wished for by both pre-service and in-service teachers. |
