Classroom Assessment as a Vehicle for Teachers' Reflections in Response to Educational Change in Singapore

• In Event: Assessment to Support Learning Across Borders and Systems of Education: Examining Enactment at Scale

Abstract

Purpose & Perspective
Singapore’s education system is renowned for its rigorous assessment practices which are integral to the nation’s high-performing academic culture. Recent reforms in Singapore have focused on shifting the emphasis on summative assessment towards formative assessment (Tan, 2017), which comprises: short assessment tasks that identify students’ needs, abilities, and interest; ongoing monitoring of students’ learning progress; and giving feedback to students to improve their learning. This research focuses on the transformative impact of classroom assessment (CA) on the reflective practices and practical reasoning (Audi, 2006) of English primary school teachers amidst educational reforms in Singapore.

We focus on CA as it is embedded in the classroom teaching for examining how teachers design and implement assessment practices to check how their teaching impact on students learning, followed by on-going adjustment in the specific classroom context (Vanlommel & Schildkamp, 2019; Wyatt-Smith, et al., 2024). We studied how teachers can adapt decisions in teaching by observing students’ learning in the CA processes, remaining attentive to situations where existing routines are ineffective and seeking alternative solutions.

Methods & Results
Situated against the backdrop of Singapore's assessment reforms, the study uses data from a two-year research project involving ten primary schools. Specifically, we draw upon the Pragmatist notion of “reflection”, the concepts of “practical reasoning” (Audi, 2006) and “assessment as inquiry” (Delandshere, 2002), while exploring the teaching heuristic goal systems (Janssen et al., 2014) of two English primary school teachers (one male novice teacher and one female experienced teacher) in Singapore. The participants represented typical cases illustrating different forms of practical reasoning in responses to educational reforms. To trace teachers’ practical reasoning and co-construct their goal systems, the laddering method (Veledo-de Oliviera et al. 2006) was adapted, involving four rounds of one-hour lesson observations and one-hour stimulated recall interviews with each participant over two years. We traced the processes of classroom activities (including CA) within the laddering systems in eight lessons (four for each participant) and conducted within-case analysis and cross-case analysis (Miles et al., 2019) on the evolving patterns of the teachers’ practical reasoning. Figure 1 depicts one example of such a laddering.

We examined the alignment (or lack thereof) between the goals teachers adopt and the principles advocated in educational reforms, and identified subsequent challenges in enacting practices to understand how these goals guide (or fail to guide) teachers’ choices, as influenced by CA processes.

The study revealed the evolving patterns of teachers’ practical reasoning and emphasized that CA analysis and interpretation was crucial for revealing and refining "practical reasoning" in responses to educational changes.

Significance
This study sheds light on how to engage teachers in deeper consideration of the purposes, processes, and meanings of educational change in Singapore. In particular, the study emphasizes the critical role of CA in mediating teacher reflections and promoting critical dialogues during assessment reforms.

Authors

• Heng Jiang, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University

• Saminathan Moghan, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University