Teachers’ Multimodal and Multidimensional Views on Assessment

• In Event: Examining Teacher Assessment Practices

Abstract

This study explored the views of 233 elementary school teachers on the meaning of assessment, and its relationships to the educational ideologies of the schools in which they teach, to their epistemological views and their declared assessment knowledge and practices. The study included 4 types of schools: non-religious-state schools, democratic, anthroposophic and art&science schools. Using a mixed method study, the questionnaires included both closed questions and multimodal types of open questions: verbal, metaphors, drawings and pictures. Teachers' views were characterized by categories reflecting different views on assessment: functional/positivists; dialogical/adaptive and emergent/emancipatory. The findings show significant differences in views among the different schools for each assessment category. It further demonstrated that metaphors add a unique contribution to teachers' views on assessment.

Authors

• Pnina Tal, Levinsky College of Education

• Tamar Levin, Tel Aviv University