An Investigation On Senior High School English Teachers’ Assessment Literacy

With the continuous deepening of the curriculum reform,the transformation of educational assessment paradigm,and the proposal and implementation of core literacy,educational world attaches more and more importance to the role of assessment in teaching,advocating that teacher should promote learning and improve teaching quality by integrating teaching,learning and assessment.Hence,higher requirements are put on the teachers’ assessment literacy.Against this background,the researches on teachers’ assessment literacy are gradually on the rise,but most of them are merely analysis of the status quo and are not in-depth enough.Moreover,there are few studies on the factors influencing assessment literacy,thus it is difficult to put forward targeted and effective suggestions on the improvement of English teachers’ assessment literacy.This paper investigates the status quo of senior high school English teachers’ assessment literacy from several dimensions of assessment attitude,assessment competence and assessment experience,based on which,it analyzes the factors affecting teachers’ assessment literacy and puts forward effective suggestions on improving senior high school English teachers’ assessment literacy.This study adopts a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods including literature investigation,interview and questionnaire.By adopting the questionnaire on the status quo and forming process of high school English teachers’ assessment literacy and taking 90 senior high school English teachers from Shengzhou,Shaoxing,Zhejiang province as samples,the status quo of senior high school English teachers’ literacy and its influencing factors were investigated.This thesis mainly addresses the following three questions,1)What is the status quo of senior high school English teachers’ assessment literacy? 2)What factors affect senior high school English teachers’ assessment literacy?3)How to improve senior high school English teachers’ assessment literacy?The findings are as follows: in general,the assessment competence of high school English teachers in Shengzhou is unsatisfactory and not ideal.Although teachers have a positive attitude towards assessment,they have poor knowledge and skills.The mismatch between concept and competence may make teachers unable to give full play to the role of assessment in promoting learning.In the regard of the influencing factors,teachers’ assessment literacy will be influenced by these three kinds of assessment experiences:whether they have taken assessment courses,participated in doing project research and read an assessment book.In the aspect of the main source of knowledge and skills and their impact on the English teachers’ assessment literacy,the study found that in the pre-service period,among eight kinds of assessment knowledge,only one kind of knowledge which is how to correct and give feedback on students’ homework can make contributions to improve the teachers’ assessment literacy.In terms of acquisition methods,these following four methods are more effective in improving teachers’ assessment literacy,including having course in educational measurement or statistics and courses in educational assessment or classroom assessment,having courses directly relevant to assessment,preparing for the Teacher Certification examination and reading educational newspapers,magazines and books.In the in-service period,six kinds of assessment knowledge acquired by teachers have a positive effect,which includes how to design classroom questions and exercises according to the teaching objectives,how to understand student learning through classroom observation and so on.In terms of acquisition methods,four learning methods are more effective and ideal than others including daily communication with colleagues,communication with students,participation in professional activities organized by teaching and research groups and individual guidance from outside experts.In addition,it is found that the experiences of being assessed in primary and secondary schools has no significant influence on the improvement of teachers’ assessment knowledge and skills,but they can profoundly affect teachers’ assessment attitudes and beliefs.Finally,this study puts forward suggestions to improve English teachers’ assessment literacy from three aspects: individual,school and country.Teachers themselves should change their ideas,accept the fact that their assessment literacy is insufficient,and improve their assessment literacy by the ways that are proved effective in this study;Schools should set up and enrich assessment-related courses and provide pre-service teachers with various assessment-related training and practical opportunities to apply assessment competence;The education department should regard teachers’ assessment literacy as an important aspect of professional competence,formulate the assessment scheme and improve the standards of teachers’ assessment literacy.