Investigating Lesotho’s Secondary School Teachers’ Challenges From Formative Assessment On The Integrated Curriculum

The application of Formative Assessment into the integrated curriculum has been widely considered by most countries as the best path to take in the teaching and learning process and leads to high-quality education adherent in the 21st-century intellectual demands.However,this practice had brought different kinds of challenges in some countries such as Lesotho.Therefore,this study aims to investigate Lesotho’s secondary school teachers’ challenges from the formative assessment on the integrated curriculum.The study explores whether teachers have the necessary knowledge of the formative assessment process in an integrated curriculum.Furthermore,the study investigates the methods used by Lesotho’s secondary school teachers to assess students in an integrated curriculum and the challenges encounteredA mixed-methods approach was adopted that entails both quantitative and qualitative techniques.A five-point Likert scale questionnaire was used to collect data from Lesotho secondary teachers in Mafeteng.Cronbach’s alpha was then used to test the questionnaire’s internal item consistency.The quantitative data were analyzed in SPSS where the correlation was undertaken and statistical measures such as One-Sample T Tests were used to test the hypothesis.One-Way ANOVA was conducted to test the relationship between secondary teacher’s experience and perception towards formative assessment.Qualitative information was collected by in-depth interviews and the collected data were analyzed by thematic data analysis.NVivo software was used for thematic coding.Quantitative and qualitative results were reported separately and results were compared and used in the discussion.The results from the study showed that while Lesotho teachers showed positive attitudes towards formative assessment in an integrated curriculum,however,they faced challenges in its implementation as required by the Lesotho curriculum and assessment policy.On top of that results indicated that the Lesotho secondary school teachers lack sufficient knowledge to successfully implement formative assessment in the integrated curriculum,Resultantly,the teachers experienced difficulty shifting from summative to formative assessment.Furthermore,the high student-teacher ratio,lack of resources,and lack of effective in-service training were identified as the major problems challenging the implementation.It was also realized that teachers experience had an impact on their perception towards formative assessment implementation in integrated curriculum.The study concludes that formative assessment plays a significant role in the teaching and learning process of the 21st century integrated curriculum.However,Lesotho’s secondary school teachers’ knowledge of formative assessment and its successful implementation in an integrated curriculum is insufficient because of several challenges indicated above.The study recommends that the Lesotho Ministry of education should focus more on intensive in-service training for teachers,reduce the student-teacher ratio,and supply teachers with the necessary resources.This study also suggests that teachers should adopt the proposed model that had been innovated by this research to improve their formative assessment proactive in an integrated curriculum.