Exploring Teachers’ Language Assessment Literacy: A Social Constructivist Approach to Understanding Effective Practices

Exploring teachers’ levels of assessment literacy in terms of their previous assessment experiences may help teacher educators to better understand the factors which promote or prevent effective assessment, thus contributing to more targeted and empowering teacher education. The research presented in this paper adopts a social constructivist model of learning and meaning-making, with the language classroom representing the community of practice. The first phase of the project consisted of interviews with teachers, in which they were invited to estimate their understanding of individual components of the assessment process and indicate how much they would like to learn about each. Classroom observations then took place followed by post-observation, reflective interviews. Finally, focus group discussions were conducted with further groups of experienced teachers. Four key findings are presented, highlighting the considerable differences in understanding which exist between teachers and those who research and write about language testing/assessment.