A Narrative Inquiry of A Novice High School English Teacher’s Writing Assessment Literacy Under Diagnostic Language Assessment

• In Event: Teacher education and the teaching profession

Proposal

In the past twenty years, teachers’ assessment literacy has received increased research interest (Alderson et al., 2015; DeLuca et al. 2016). Stiggins (1991) first incorporated two aspects into assessment literacy: “what does this assessment tell students about the achievement outcomes we value and what is likely to be the effect of this assessment on students?” (p.535). In Language Assessment, the assessment literacy focuses more on the dynamic relations among the knowledge of assessment, skills, and specific sociocultural context (Brindley, 2001). According to Crusan et al. (2016), teachers’ writing assessment literacy includes assessment knowledge, concept of assessing writing and the practices of assessing students’ writing.
Although some previous studies explored the perceptions and attitudes of educational measurement (Alkharusi et al., 2011) and started to pay attention to writing assessment literacy (Ahmed & Troudi, 2018) through large-scale questionnaire or survey (Crusen et al., 2016; Tayyebi, 2022), novice language teachers’ writing assessment literacy has not been adequately investigated such as how it develops across time and what factors might influence its development. Assessing student writing is a major part of second language writing teachers’ workloads (Crusan et al., 2016). In China, researchers in second language acquisition and teacher education are attending to classroom assessment in recent years. For example, Lee (2017) reviews principles and theories of assessing writing. In contrast, not many studies pay attention to K-12 English teachers in Chinese public schools.
To fill the gap and address this problem, this narrative inquiry follows a novice high-school English teacher, Linda, in southwestern China for three years. Within the Three-Dimensional Narrative Space (Clandinin & Connelly，2000), this study collected field notes through interviews, observations, and reflection journals. Analyzing the field notes through the Teacher Assessment Literacy in Practice Framework (Xu & Brown, 2016), the researchers find that this novice teacher’s writing assessment literacy in practice developed from the knowledge base to teacher conceptions of assessment and achieved the transformation of assessor identity (re)construction. The writing assessment literacy was influenced by macro policies (educational reform in China), meso working place (teacher development programs and social-emotional support), and micro personal factors (teacher reflection and practices). There were three stages in Linda’s writing assessment literacy development trajectory. In the first stage, she vaguely knew that her students were not good at writing but she was not sure how to fix those problems. In the second stage, she participated in some teacher education programs including public teaching competition and accepting training about the online platform of a diagnostic assessment tool. She gradually realized that assessment is part of teaching and learning, rather than a separate activity in class. In the third stage, she reflected her role and identity in assessment and got the conclusion that an excellent teacher should learn with students and help students to improve their own assessment literacy so that they could be independent learners in the future. The findings provide empirical evidence of the theoretical model of teacher assessment literacy and contribute to a deeper understanding of novice teachers’ writing assessment literacy development in different periods of time.
Despite increasing number of immigrant students in Canada, little research has examined novice teachers’ assessment literacy in classrooms, which is important for supporting learning and achievement (DeLuca et al., 2021). Considering that, the narratives from this research can shed light on pre-service and in-service Canadian teacher development in terms of language assessment literacy.

Reference
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Author

• Haojun Guo, University of Windsor