How science teachers' concerns about school‐based assessment of practical work vary with time: the Hong Kong experience

Abstract

School-based assessment of science students' practical skills has two important roles-as a complement to written papers in public examinations and as a catalyst for enriching the science curriculum in schools. This article describes a quantitative study of the concerns chemistry and biology teachers experience as they engage in the process of implementation of a school-based assessment scheme for practical work. A 23-item questionnaire was developed to measure five categories of teacher concern: evaluation, information, management, consequence and refocusing. The nature of each category of teacher concern is discussed in relation to innovation adoption and implementation. Data were collected from 400 chemistry and 412 biology teachers in Hong Kong. Teachers' information and management concerns lessened in intensity when they became experienced users of a school-based assessment scheme. However, teaching experience alone could not motivate teachers to think more about the impact of school-based assessment on student learning, their professional development in student assessment and the possible refinements in their school-based assessment scheme. Concerns-based interventions are suggested to help teachers grow professionally.

Predicting teachers' intentions to implement school-based assessment using the theory of planned behaviour

“…Further, they did not agree that SBA can make the teaching an easier job. This is not a surprising finding and is in line with conclusions from previous studies (Cheung & Yip, 2004;Davison, 2007;Yip & Cheung, 2005). Although SBA is supposed to be an integral part of teaching and learning, many teachers seem to regard it as an extra burden.…”

“…The Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) also included a component of SBA for many subjects since 1980. Despite the long history of SBA in Hong Kong, studies exploring teachers' views on SBA in HKALE or HKCEE (e.g., Cheung & Yip, 2004;Davison, 2007;Lam & Chan, 2010;Yip & Cheung, 2005) showed that teachers had many concerns about the implementation of SBA in terms of resources, workloads, and training. Not all were convinced regarding the reliability and validity of SBA.…”

Facilitating Chemistry Teachers to Implement Inquiry-based Laboratory Work

“…The open-ended questionnaire developed by Hall & Hord (2001) was used to collect the seven teachers_ concerns about inquirybased laboratory work. The teachers were invited to respond to the openended question: FWhen you think about inquiry-based experiments in chemistry, what are your major concerns?_ Research by Cheung & Yip (2004) revealed that when teachers are confronted with an educational innovation, they may have five categories of concern:…”

Teachers' concerns about adopting constructivist online game‐based learning in formal curriculum teaching: The VISOLE experience

“…One of the critical reasons is that teachers' concerns about the advocated innovations are not rightly observed and dealt with (Borgerding, Sadler & Koroly, ). The Stages of Concern (SoC) model (Cheung & Yip, , ; Hall & Hord, , ) is a useful framework for measuring teachers' concerns when they are in front of an EI, in terms of five categorical concerns— Evaluation , Information , Management , Consequence , and Refocusing . Employing the SoC framework, the present research aimed at probing into teachers' concerns about adopting VISOLE in formal curriculum teaching.…”