Investigation of an Alternatively Certified New High School Chemistry Teacher’s Assessment Literacy

Abstract

Assessing student learning to adapt instruction to support learning is an important skill all teachers need to develop. However, it is not an easy task for teachers and even more difficult for new teachers. The current study aims to explore an alternatively certified new chemistry teacher"s understanding and practices of classroom assessment to help educators and researchers to support teachers" assessment literacies. This study used holistic case study design to explore the teacher"s assessment literacy. Pre/reflective interviews, observations, classroom artifacts, including assessment tasks and a survey, were used as data sources. The results suggest that, in theory, the teacher"s understanding of assessment aligned with current view of assessment as she mostly valued formative function of assessment while, in practice, the teacher faced difficulties to practice assessment as she preferred and did not select and use appropriate assessment tasks to accomplish her aims, such as supporting conceptual learning.

Does Teacher Education Matter? Comparison of Education and Science Major Teachers’ Assessment Literacy

“…Results of the studies conducted with pre-service teachers revealed that although preservice teachers' assessment literacy was close to constructivist view, in theory, their assessment practices were more traditional. Studies conducted with in-service teachers yielded similar findings (Gottheiner & Siegel, 2012;İzci & Siegel, 2019). Content analysis of studies regarding assessment knowledge and practice (İzci, 2018) indicated that there have not been longitudinal studies on assessment literacy.…”

“…Some focused on the change in pre and in-service teachers' assessment literacy after participating in a professional development program or a course (DeLuca, Chavez, Bellara & Cao, 2013;Deneen & Brown, 2016;Koh, 2011) and relied on teachers' documents to reveal their assessment literacy without using observations. Other qualitative studies examined middle school science (Gottheiner & Siegel, 2012), chemistry (Izci & Siegel, 2019), pre-service physics (Ogan-Bekiroglu & Suzuk, 2014), and pre-service secondary (Siegel & Wissehr, 2011) teachers' assessment literacy during the planning and teaching a science topic. Even though there has been an increase in the number of research on assessment literacy relying on qualitative data, there has been scarcity of studies focusing on both knowledge and practice level of assessment literacy with its all dimensions (e.g., İzci, 2018).…”

“…Qualitative studies on assessment literacy mostly focused on either pre-service (i.e., Ogan-Bekiroglu & Suzuk, 2014;Siegel & Wissehr, 2011) or in-service (i.e., Gottheiner & Siegel, 2012;İzci & Siegel, 2019) science teachers' literacy. One study in this category conducted a descriptive content analysis on empirical studies investigating secondary science teachers' assessment knowledge and practice using the assessment literacy framework (İzci, 2018).…”

“…Second, the model was proposed based on the empirical and theoretical literature on teachers' assessment knowledge and practices. Lastly, literature provided empirical evidence for the applicability of the model for investigating both pre and inservice science teachers' assessment literacy (Gottheiner & Siegel, 2012;İzci & Siegel, 2019;Siegel & Wissehr, 2011). STAL model defines assessment literacy as assessment knowledge and skills, which teachers require while designing an assessment-centered learning environment (Abell & Siegel, 2011).…”

Assessor in action: assessment literacy development in a biochemistry context

“…Instructors have varying experiences with assessment training, which can be formal or informal (Izci and Siegel, 2019;Schultz et al, 2018). Instructors' experiences of assessment training are likely influenced by their experiences of assessment as a student, their instructional experiences, talking with their peers, or formal professional development.…”