Finnish Compulsory School English and Swedish Teachers’ Classroom Assessment Practices

Abstract

The study explores Finnish compulsory school language teachers’ formative and summative assessment practices. It aims at finding out what formative and summative assessment modes and tools the teachers use and what kind of evidence they collect for students’ final grades. The data were gathered through questionnaires administered in national evaluations of learning outcomes. The results indicate that teachers use multiple tools, i.e., scores, information on a task’s objective, oral feedback, and model performances. They listen to students paired discussions and talk with students about their progress. Students also assess their own skills. Teachers’ feedback on exams was information on a task’s objective, oral feedback, and model performances. When deciding on final grades, teachers use as evidence written tests and students’ working in lessons. However, there were some differences between languages and syllabi. Teachers gave the final grades based on students’ language proficiency at a given moment stressing the curricula’s content areas related to language proficiency. At the same time, teachers indicated to be basing their grades on averages in all the different content areas. The study has implications for teachers’ assessment literary training and for exploring more in detail the factors impacting students’ final grades.