Article published In: Australian Review of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 39:3 (2016) ► pp.233–254
Assessment planning within the context of university English language teaching (ELT) in China
Implications for teacher assessment literacy
Published online: 6 April 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.39.3.02xu
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.39.3.02xu
Teacher assessment literacy (AL) is a concern for both educational assessment and teacher education research. As part of teacher
AL, teacher competency of assessment planning has remained underexplored. To address this gap, this study explored how a group of
20 contest-winning university English teachers in China planned for assessment through qualitative analyses of their lesson plans
and follow-up teacher interviews. The findings show that: (1) lesson plans include assessment-related components such as teaching
objectives, student background, instruction-embedded assessment, and after-class assessment tasks; (2) their assessment planning
is characterized by a clear understanding of learning goals, but an absence of rubrics and exemplars for performance assessments,
over-reliance on groups as target of assessment, and inconsistencies between learning objectives and assessment tasks; and (3)
their assessment planning was mainly intuitive and instruction-oriented. This paper concludes with a working model of assessment
planning, and discusses a future research agenda for assessment planning.
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