2.5 Empirical Studies on AL and LAL among In-service Teachers
2.5.2 Factors Mediating AL and LAL Evolvement
2.5.2.1 Contextual Factors
The contextual factors identified in the literature cover a wide range from macro social culture and policies through meso school-based environment to micro classroom context. The details in this theme are illustrated in AL from general education first, and then followed by LAL in the language assessment field.
2.5.2.1.1 In the Field of AL
In AL-related literature, three levels of contextual factors have been identified: macro, meso, and micro (See Table 2.2). The sources are listed in a chronological order.
Table 2.2
The Contextual Factors Mediating AL Identified in Previous Studies Three
levels
Identified factors Sources Macro-
level
Educational policies Azis (2012), Abrams et al. (2016), and Koh
& DePass (2019)
Historical culture Black & Wiliam (2005), Brown (2011), and Gebril & Brown (2014)
Social and cultural norms Seden & Svaricek (2018) Meso-
level School type Quilter (2000) and Taber et al. (2011) School effectiveness Prizovskaya (2018)
School culture Allal (2013), Djoub (2017), Inbar-Lourie &
Levi (2020), and Luthfiyyah et al. (2020) School policy Chew & Lee (2013), Tsagari & Vogt (2017),
Lam (2019), and Zulaiha et al. (2020) Grade level Cheng & Sun (2015) and Zhang & Burry-
Stock (2003) Micro-
level
Workload Alkharusi et al. (2012)
Class size Cheng et al. (2008) and Cheng & Sun (2015)
From the macro perspective, educational policies and the historical cultural background of the country framed teachers’ conceptions and practices of assessment (Black, 1993; Koh & DePass, 2019). The distinctive culture in each site might be a great contributor to the discrepant assessment conceptions among teachers from different countries (Black & Wiliam, 2005). A series of evidence came from the assessment conception survey among teachers in various nations. In the western results (e.g., Australia, New Zealand), teachers tended to endorse assessment for improvement strongly (Brown, 2011; Brown et al., 2011) whereas in Iran assessment for accountability was endorsed more strongly than improvement (Pishghadam &
Shayesteh, 2012). In low-stakes assessment contexts (e.g., New Zealand), low inter- correlation between assessment for accountability and assessment for improvement was reported (Brown, 2011; Brown et al., 2011).
By contrast in a high-stakes assessment environment (e.g., China), a high correlation was proven to exist between assessment for accountability and improvement purposes (Brown et al., 2009). Besides, conceptions towards assessment in high-stakes societies shared great similarities (Gebril & Brown, 2014).
Besides, the social and cultural norms also shaped teachers’ assessment activities (Seden & Svaricek, 2018). Against such backdrop, teachers’ assessment practices were manipulated, including selecting assessment methods, adopting assessment tools,
interpreting the results, and deciding the usage of assessment outcomes (Black &
Wiliam, 2005). The national assessment policies and curriculum standards were powerful levers on teachers’ use of the assessment data (Abrams et al., 2016). This may be due to the fact that assessment-related policies oriented teachers to a different focus in instruction and assessment (Azis, 2012).
At the meso level, schools, the main workplace of teachers, exerts a significant mediating effect on teachers’ AL. It is quite evident that a great difference exists in assessment activities across schools (Taber et al., 2011). The types of school, school culture, school policy, and grade level are evidenced to be the major factors.
In terms of types of school, the assessment-related activities initiated by teachers varied largely between primary and middle schools, however, as to which group was more proficient in AL than the other, there were inconsistent findings (Abrams et al., 2016; Suah & Ong, 2012). The study from Quilter (2000) showed that teachers in middle schools overall had a better mastery of knowledge about educational assessment than teachers in elementary schools. On the contrary, Prizovskaya (2018) revealed that it was elementary school teachers who performed better than teachers from middle schools. Additionally, the effectiveness of school was also another mediating factor. Teachers working in high achieving schools were more likely to outperform those from low achieving schools (Prizovskaya, 2018).
The culture, embedded in the school, affects all school-based activities including assessment. The way that a school chooses to approach assessment, whether a test- driven one for assessing students’ performance or a learning-oriented assessment for improving students’ academic achievement, constitutes assessment culture in a school (Inbar-Lourie & Levi, 2020). The assessment culture with different orientations and foci across schools might influence teachers’ assessment conceptions and practices (Abrams et al., 2016; Allal, 2013). In general, change-oriented schools were more willing to redirect their assessment culture in assessment understandings and activities than centralized schools which seemed less innovative in pedagogy and more likely to be driven by tests (Inbar-Lourie & Levi, 2020). In cooperation-directed settings, novice teachers could gain a substantial amount of assistance from senior experienced teachers during the application of assessment knowledge into practice (Luthfiyyah et al., 2020). It seemed not conducive to improve teachers’ AL in schools where the institution played a dominant role in teachers’ entire assessment process (Djoub, 2017).
Apart from school culture, the school policy also shaped teachers’ classroom-based assessment practices (Tsagari & Vogt, 2017; Zulaiha et al., 2020). The support from colleagues and school leaders, including access to training and resources in assessment, tended to positively impact instructors’ assessment activities (Chew & Lee, 2013).
Otherwise, the institutional constraints might hinder teachers’ initial attempts to try out non-traditional assessment methods (Lam, 2019).
In the school context, grade level had long been identified as a crucial variable in teachers’ understanding of classroom-based assessment especially in making decisions about scoring and choosing appropriate assessment tools for specific purposes (Cheng
& Sun, 2015; Stiggins & Bridgeford, 1985). Evidence showed that with the increasing of grade level, teachers in higher grade tended to be more dependent on objective tests and teacher-made tests rather than the tests adopted from published textbooks or other printed materials in the classroom assessment (Stiggins & Bridgeford, 1985; Zhang &
Burry-Stock, 2003).
Moving from meso to micro level at classroom, assessment practices might differ considerably across classrooms even in the same school (Taber et al., 2011). Teachers’
teaching workload and class size were possible contributing factors to such a variation.
Specifically speaking, the study suggested that weekly teaching load had a negative correlation with the use of classroom tests by teachers for diagnosing learners’
weaknesses (Alkharusi et al., 2012). The class size affected various aspects of teachers’
decisions in grading activities. Teachers who worked in a larger size classroom were more possible to utilize paper-and-pencil tests as a more convenient way to assess learners while those who taught the smaller class were more willing to create assessments themselves (Cheng & Sun, 2015). The relatively larger classes to some extent directed teachers to favor less labor-intensive assessment methods, which were easily implemented and scored (Cheng et al., 2008).
2.5.2.1.2 In the Field of LAL
In the same vein, research approaching contextual factors in LAL roughly follows the same categories (See Table 2.3). However, due to the relatively limited number of studies, the categories identified is not as rich as AL.
Table 2.3
The Contextual Factors Mediating LAL in Previous Studies Three
levels
Factors identified Source Macro-
level
National policy Jia et al. (2006), Portelli & O’Sullivan (2016), and Sultana (2019)
Meso- level
School type Farhady & Tavassoli (2018) and Tavassoli &
Farhady (2018)
School culture Jia et al. (2006) and Seden & Svaricek (2018) Micro-
level
Class size & workload Han & Kaya (2014)
Other stakeholders Jia et al. (2006) and Rogers et al. (2007)
At the national policy level, the high-stake test mandated by the country usually overwhelming directed classroom teachers to be test-driven in classroom teaching and assessing, especially on what and how teachers assessed students, which partially led to scarce awareness of the necessity to use non-traditional assessment to evaluate students’ achievement (Jia et al., 2006; Sultana, 2019). This concern was confirmed by Portelli and O’Sullivan (2016) that the unbalanced focus of assessment practices in classroom was likely to be constrained by the external policy and testing agenda at the national level, consequently narrowing LAL among language teachers.
knowledgeable in language assessment than their peers working in private schools where teachers were seldomly allowed to develop assessments by themselves and where teachers’ professional knowledge in assessment was not valued highly compared with their English proficiency (Farhady & Tavassoli, 2018; Tavassoli &
Farhady, 2018). Besides, schools advocating collaboration among teachers benefited teachers considerably in their LAL improvement because consultation with colleagues functioned as a primary source of teachers’ subjective theory related to assessment (Jia, et al., 2006; Seden & Svaricek, 2018).
At the micro level, Han and Kaya (2014) indicated that class size and teaching hours had a significant impact upon teachers’ preferences towards language assessment.
Teachers with more than 25 students in the classroom were more likely to utilize assessment for instruction and informing than teachers in a smaller size of the class.
Teachers who taught over 25 hours in a week favored assessment to inform than those who had fewer teaching hours. In general, teachers who worked longer hours with a larger size of the class were more preferred to the communicative function of assessment.
Besides, other stakeholders (e.g., parents and students) also functioned as a mediating factor in this process. With a focus on EFL teachers’ LAL in reading assessment, Jia et al. (2006) indicated that parents indirectly influenced EFL teachers’ assessment process in school and that students’ widely varying reading ability in a class
complicated the assessment tasks because assessment practices appropriate for high- achievers might not work for slow learners. Rogers et al. (2007) confirmed that students’ English proficiency not only influenced assessment procedures their teachers chose, but also the assessment conceptions embraced by teachers.
In summary, though they were identified in different categories, these mediating factors could not be separated from each other, nor did they influence independently on teachers’ LAL in a vacuum. The contextual factors were inter-related and interactive with LAL, just as what Edwards (2017) stated that although some elements of LAL were generalizable to all contexts, some components were context-dependent.
Teachers constantly made a variety of “compromises” between LAL and the context in the negotiation among various tensions (Y. Xu & Brown, 2016, p. 157). Language teachers’ LAL was shaped and even constrained by the socio-cultural contexts where they were (Inbar-Lourie, 2012, 2017; Stabler-Havener, 2018). However, the contextual factors did not directly function on individuals, they were mediated through experiential factors (X. Yan et al., 2018).