This section provides an overview of some of the influences that affect teachers’ day-to-day summative assessment practices in their respective schools. The findings are related to the question: What are the factors that promote or inhibit
teachers’ existing summative assessment practices? Teachers reported several
factors and conditions within the schools that supported or constrained their assessment practices. These included their initial teacher education programme (ITE), leadership issues in the school, institutional and external examination pressures, lack of coherent assessment policy and guidelines, exemplar assessment resources and assessment-related professional development opportunities.
6.4.1 Initial teacher education programme
When teachers were asked if they felt their initial teacher education programme (ITE) prepared them well for the roles and responsibilities in classroom assessment, most teachers responded positively. However, when asked to describe in detail aspects of assessment they had learned and how well they had learned them, they indicated that they still needed support and training about alternative methods of assessments, particularly in “designing laboratory-related practical tasks” (Amelia). They also felt that they needed support in “designing small research projects, which their students could do individually or in groups”
(Jineta). Ivan and Wilson reported that the ITE programme prepared them well in some areas of assessment such as managing students’ records of achievements (marks), and marking and reporting students’ grades. However, teachers generally felt that they found designing assessment tasks for a range of cognitive skills more challenging. One teacher (Steven) has had no prior teacher education but he seemed to be coping well with the challenges he encountered in his teaching as he was receiving a lot of support from the head of department who was also a participant in this study. However, he also identified elements of assessment that he was not comfortable with, most of which are listed in Table 16.
Overall, all the six teachers reported that their teacher education training not only influenced their views about their existing teaching practices in general but also their perspectives about learning and assessment. The teachers’ views were elicited through the semi-structured pre-assessment teacher interviews where they reported their self-reported beliefs about teaching, how students learn science and how to assess their students’ learning. Analyses of the teachers’ views about assessment seem to explain their assessment practices. For example, Jineta, the most senior of the six teachers engaged in the study was of the view that her teacher education training helped her to understand and apply appropriate approaches to teach certain topics and not to use the same teaching approach all the time, she believed that her students learned science through her teaching and the classroom activities she set for her students. She also reported that the assessment strategies she learned from her teacher education helped her in her assessment practices. The rest of the teachers appeared to share similar views as Jineta about how their teacher education influenced their views on teaching, how students learn and how the students should be assessed.
6.4.2 Leadership in assessment
The teachers were asked whether they saw their school leaders (for example, principal, deputy principal, head of science department) as assessment leaders. Their responses indicated that they identified their principals as the most significant influence to initiate leadership in assessment in their schools. However, the more experienced teachers in the study seemed to hold the view that
teachers, as well as knowledgeable others from the Ministry of Education such as curriculum developers and examination officers whom they tended to believe had expertise in curriculum and assessment. The teachers’ interview responses suggested that they considered the school principal and heads of subjects had a major role to play. For example, two teachers viewed a school leader as “someone at the helm, who not only support[s] and advise[s] teachers on their assessment activities” (Ishmael) but also “initiate[s] staff development opportunities and inform[s] teachers continually of new developments” about assessment (Amelia).
It was clear that the teachers were aware of their school leaders’ roles and responsibilities and had expectations of what they should do to help professional growth and improvement of the schools. Teachers generally felt that school leaders should be able to “set directions and goals for the school” (Jineta) in all aspects of school development, and to put in place necessary mechanisms and strategies that teachers were aware of so that they could all contribute towards helping students to achieve the intended educational outcomes.
6.4.3 Institutional pressures
The teachers identified other responsibilities apart from their teaching and examination pressure as key factors that affected their teaching and assessment practices. Extra responsibilities and heavy teaching loads seemed to reduce the time they were allocated to prepare for their lessons and assessment tasks. Thus, teachers tended to end up using their own time to complete their instructional activities that added to the institutional pressure they dealt with on a daily basis.
Jineta talked about her experiences of teaching in a boarding school that was common amongst the teachers that participated in this study:
Every teacher in my school is put on a duty roster to oversee the day-to-day operation of the school; teachers supervise students; they are also involved extracurricular activities. After classes, some teachers supervise students in the gardens. I teach four different classes and preparing lessons and laboratory instructional activities require time and self-discipline; it can be frustrating at times but that’s what I am paid to do. (Jineta)
Jineta’s account provides a glimpse of the roles and responsibilities that the teachers experienced in boarding schools. They taught under intense institutional constraints with pressure from a heavy teaching load, timetabling issues, extracurricular responsibilities and their own families to look after. They also mentioned external pressure such as parental expectation of teachers to help their children pass examinations.
When asked what they felt about the external year nine examinations, all the teachers shared common feelings and views about the effect of examinations on their classroom practices and the pressures associated with it. The key impacts of the external examination on their teaching included increased workload and uncertainty over the performance of their students in the examinations. Three of the teachers had previously taught year nine science course and were able to share their experiences of examination-related pressure. The teachers said that parents set high expectations in general of the school and the teachers, in particular those who teach year nine students. Wilson noted the desire of parents to have their children continue with secondary education to year 10. This had been shown during recent student-teacher-parent interviews that his school had organised:
There are limited spaces in secondary schools and parents seemed worried whether their children would be selected to progress to year 10 the following year. So I always try to work extra hard by preparing mock examinations so that my students can get lots of practice and get familiar with the likely questions that may come in the examinations. (Wilson)
This teacher hoped that more practice using mock examinations would enable his students to succeed in the examinations. The teachers who taught students in year nine and 11 usually worked extra hard, giving extra classes to go through past examination papers with the students.
6.4.4 Lack of assessment policy framework
None of the five secondary schools who participated in the study had a comprehensive assessment policy framework to guide teachers in their assessment practices. Instead they had partially written instructions of assessment that
and reported. These instructions did not include principles of assessment, nor were there directions on the assessment methods and strategies teachers would use to construct assessment tasks. There also were no instructions on how data or information on student learning should be managed, processed, interpreted, and what purpose it might serve. Interestingly, some of the teachers were not aware that their schools had any form of assessment instruction. One teacher admitted that he had not sighted a copy of the assessment guideline since he started teaching at the school:
What I am aware of is that the principal and his deputy provided verbal instruction on assessment procedures to the teachers. I learned about the grading scales and reporting procedures we use in the school from my colleagues. (Ishmael)
Similar sentiments were expressed by the rest of the teachers, who confirmed that their schools had no assessment policy, and they knew only of the assessment instructions on administration of tests and examinations, and the grading scale and reporting procedures that teachers must conform to during the reporting period. However, the general school policy in each school stipulates that teachers should assess their students on a regular basis in order to determine their progress and to report their achievements to students and parents. The teachers’ interview responses also indicated that there was general lack of effective monitoring mechanisms that would ensure teachers worked towards developing high quality assessment tasks.
6.4.5 Lack of relevant assessment resource materials
Teachers reported a lack of up-to-date reference materials, such as textbooks, education journals, magazines and research articles on educational measurement that they could access to expand their understanding of and skills in assessment. There were also very limited resources for practical experiments and textbooks in all the schools studied. This was one of the reasons why teachers like Ivan reported they were not keen to use practical activities for a summative purpose. The Curriculum Development Division supplied science curriculum materials (as well as other textbooks for the other subjects) to the schools once in a while
according to some teachers, they did not have sufficient copies for a class set, and the best they could do was to ask students to share whatever was made available to the school. The teachers said that this lack of appropriate textbooks had contributed to their practice of writing notes on the chalkboard for students to copy. The locally produced year nine science curriculum materials were available but these do not provide assessment guidelines or exemplars that teachers could use to construct their own assessment tasks. As shown in Table 9, lack of assessment resource materials in particular is challenging and seemed to have confined teachers’ assessment activities to using items or questions from the same science textbooks and past examination papers, instead of expanding their knowledge of assessment through exemplars and being able to try other ways such as using authentic assessment tasks to assess their students.
6.4.6 Professional development support in assessment
Four of the six science teachers said that some form of staff development that was geared towards professional growth of teachers had taken place at their schools in the past year. They reported on the frequency of such activities, the topics covered, the resource persons involved and the problems they faced in implementing what they learned from the training opportunities they attended. According to Jineta, Amelia and Ivan, professional development was a fairly recent arrival. When they began their teaching careers at their present schools, there were no professional development programmes in existence. The only way that the teachers said they had been able to interact, share, and discuss matters pertaining to teaching, student achievement and other school matters was through staff meetings or informal conversations with their colleagues in the staffroom or science department.
Jineta recalled that the professional development programme in her school started in 2007 when her school established a partnership with a team of teacher educators from an overseas country to work with local teachers to organise annual education conferences that would contribute to their professional development. Jineta mentioned that the initial teacher-training workshop the group organised involved every teacher in her school and covered a range of topics such as
amongst many others. Although the professional development was not specific to assessment, Jineta believed it contributed to “building capacity in effective education in the school”.
Amelia reported that her school also provided a professional development programme that involved not only teachers from her school but from other schools under the same education authority. The resource persons in this annual teacher training conferences were all locals, and Ministry of Education officers. According to Amelia, the conference usually lasted two to three days and covered a wide range of topics including assessment topics. However, Amelia said that she already knew most of what was covered.
Ivan and Wilson also reported some form of organised professional development activities in their schools, mostly on a needs analysis basis. However, both teachers mentioned that it was not ongoing, but occurred only when the need arose. The principals usually organised the professional development activities. However, they mentioned that the frequency of such sessions depended on the availability of their school principals and their expertise. For example, Wilson mentioned that his principal was very much in control of how professional development was organised and how frequently it occurred. He recalled that his school usually had one staff development activity per semester, meaning that his school organised professional development activities twice a year. Ishmael said that his school currently did not have a professional development programme. However, some of the senior teachers who were involved in teaching years 11, 12 and 13 classes did attend professional development on assessment organised jointly by the National Examination and Standard Unit of the Ministry of Education and South Pacific Board for Educational Assessment. He said that junior teachers in his school were rarely given the opportunity to attend any professional development activities, in assessment or otherwise.
The teachers identified their need for curriculum development officers and assessment and examination officers to provide technical support and assistance to upskill teachers on assessment. They particularly asked for support not only when
basis and suggested that decisions to provide such learning opportunities should be based on a teacher needs analysis. There appeared to be limited professional development programmes taking place in the five high schools and they all remain small in scale, are often one-offs, focused on generic teaching topics and directed and funded by external organisations that often have their own agendas for conducting the professional development workshop. Clearly, the findings have revealed the need for ongoing professional development for science teachers that is embedded within the official school programme. The next section provides a summary of the teachers’ professional learning needs in assessment.