A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SCHOOL TEACHERS’ CONCEPTIONS & PRACTICES OF CLASS ROOM ASSESSMENT

Abstract

Exploration of how teachers perceive and arrange assessment events has always been a worthwhile entity for educationists.This phenomena has gained attention of the researches in the last few decades focusing teachers’ conceptions concerning various educational variables such as classroom teaching, learning and assessment etc. Teachers’ conceptions and practices of classroom assessment were investigated in the present study through COA(Conceptions of Assessment) III abridged surveydeveloped by Brown (2002),and API(Assessment Practices Inventory) initially developed by Mcmillan, Myran and Workman (2002), and modified by Brown (2009). The study targeted school teachers teaching to elementary and secondary level classes. It was found in the study that teachers held strong agreement towards conceptions of assessment encompassing improvement, school and students accountability as a purpose of classroom assessment. However, they showed strong disagreement towards assessment as irrelevant conception of
assessment. The study found significant differences of teachers’ held conceptions and their reported classroom assessment practices both at educational level being elementary and secondary. The teachers of secondary classes were found to be dominant in the use of formal assessment practices while measuring surface level cognitive processing among the students whereas elementary level school teachers weresignificantly higher in the use of informal assessments following deep cognitive processing among students. Recommendations for the stakeholders such as policy making and school education authorities are given.