EAL Teachers’ Beliefs About the Assessment of Language Learning in State-Funded Primary and Secondary Schools

Abstract

This study presents the results of an investigation on beliefs about learning assessment involving nine in-service EAL (Note 1) teachers from state-funded primary and secondary schools in Santarém, western Pará, Brazil. It capitalises on authors who discuss beliefs in the educational context, considering general learning assessment, English learning assessment, and beliefs about teaching English in state-funded schools. Data were gathered by means of semi-structured interviews and analysed following the principles of content analysis as an attempt to find points of convergence and divergence among the beliefs found. Results indicate that most of the participants’ beliefs are not consistent with the Brazilian National Curriculum Parameters for teaching additional languages, and that the participants appear to misunderstand the concepts of feedback, and diagnostic, formative, and continuous assessments. These findings can be used to improve proposals for initial and continuing education of EAL teachers both in western Pará and in the other regions of the country, as a means to promote their compliance with the National Curriculum Parameters.