Teacher Assessment Literacy: Discrepancies in Authentic Assessment Practice in EFL Context

Abstract

Teacher assessment literacy (TAL) refers to the ability of a teacher to conduct valid assessment and make use of assessment results to promote learning. As the 2015 PISA’s report indicates that Indonesian students’ achievements in three basic subjects (Reading, Science, and Math) are very low, then, a pivotal question is whether those teachers are literate enough in conducting valid assessment particularly classroom, authentic assessment. In response to such situation, this study aimed at knowing English as a Foreign Language teacher assessment literacy (EFL TAL) through investigating teachers’ authentic assessment implementation in EFL classrooms in some Senior High Schools in Bali, seeing discrepancies which occured among the types of authentic assessment across three phases of assessment implementation (planning, executing, analyzing and reporting). Data were collected through document analysis and observation. Interviews were conducted afterwards. Findings include, 1). discrepancies found in the implementation of types of assessment ranged from moderate to high, where the highest discrepancy occurred in the practice of portfolio assessment; 2). discrepancies found across phases of assessment implementation also ranged from moderate to high, where the highest discrepancy occurred in analyzing and reporting phase. The findings imply that EFL TAL might be the source of the discrepancies.