Developing Language Assessment Literacy of EFL Pre-service Teachers through Classroom Assessment Course

Abstract

The study reports on how Classroom Assessment Course changed the perspectives of EFL pre-service teachers related with language assessment and contributed to their language assessment literacy development. The participants included 48 junior students in an English language teacher education program of a state university in Turkey. All the participants enrolled in a course named Classroom Assessment and the data were collected through reflection reports and a focus group interview within the scope of this course that was conducted in a 14-week period. The coding phase of the data analysis was carried out through in-vivo coding and the codes were combined under more general themes to be presented. The findings revealed that the participants’ perspectives in language assessment significantly changed at the end of Classroom Assessment Course. While their initial thoughts included some negative connotations regarding assessment itself, its purpose and the role of teachers in language assessment, they turned to be just the opposite towards the end of the semester. Moreover, the participants also expressed that they started to feel themselves more competent in language assessment as prospective teachers and got more enthusiastic to study on this topic in the future. Demonstrating the contribution of Classroom Assessment Course to language assessment literacy development of pre-service teachers, the study offers some policy and research suggestions to improve assessment literacy of EFL teachers in similar contexts.