Turkish Teachers’ Practices of Assessment for Learning in the English as a Foreign Language Classroom

Abstract

Recently there has been a noticeable paradigm shift in educational assessment where assessment and student learning are viewed as inseparable and assessment is perceived as a tool for supporting student learning. This study was designed to investigate Turkish teachers’ preferences of common assessment methods in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom, their Assessment for Learning (AFL) practices, and determine whether they differed in their AFL practices according to some variables such as years of teaching experience, gender, and public vs. private school context. 120 EFL teachers completed the online self-report Assessment for Learning Questionnaire for Teachers (TAFL-Q) consisting of 28 statements on a 5-point (ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree) Likert scale (α = .92). The findings revealed that most Turkish EFL teachers rely on conventional methods of assessment rather than formative assessment processes. While they generally reported high levels of perceived monitoring (82.86%) and scaffolding practices (86.94%) of AFL, they had significant differences in their assessments, especially monitoring in support of student learning, according to years of teaching experience, gender, and private vs. public schools variables (p<0.05). To practice AFL, teachers need to appraise their current assessment practices and develop AFL strategies and feedback procedures. Their perceptions of AFL cannot change overnight, nor do they can do it individually and independently. They need support from different sources to recognize the effect of their previous perspectives on their practices and weigh them against the insights offered by the new assessment culture. Through self-report and observational data from both teachers and students to get better insights into monitoring and scaffolding practices, further research could be conducted to explore probable mismatches between teacher and student perceptions of AFL in EFL classrooms.