Teacher-Examiners’ Explicit and Enacted Beliefs About Proficiency Indicators in National Oral Assessments

Abstract

The test of English oral proficiency is important in High-Stakes national examinations in which large numbers of teachers are involved as examiners. Although the literature shows that the reliability of oral assessments is often threatened by rater variability, to date the role of teacher beliefs in teacher-rater judgements has received little attention. This exploratory qualitative study conducted in Singapore identified teachers’ beliefs about the construct of oral proficiency for their assessment of secondary school candidates and examined the extent to which these beliefs had been enacted in real-time assessment. Seven experienced national-level examiners participated in this study. They listened to audio-recordings of four students performing an oral interview (conversation) task in a simulated examination and assessed the performance of each of them individually. Data about teachers’ thinking which revealed their underlying beliefs when assessing was elicited through Concurrent Verbal Protocol (CVP) sessions. In addition, a questionnaire was administered a month later to elicit their explicit beliefs. Findings showed that teachers possessed a range of beliefs about the construct of oral proficiency but only some of these formed the core of their expressed criteria when assessing student performance in real time. Implications for oral assessments and further research are discussed.