Secondary school teachers’ lifelong learning of assessment: Autonomy in developing alternative assessment methods

Abstract

Assessment plays a major role in teaching and learning processes. According to Hungarian rules and regulations, teachers are obliged to evaluate their students' knowledge, behavior, and diligence in the form of grades on a scale from 1 to 5. In addition, they should also develop students' skills, abilities, knowledge, proficiencies, emotional, and volitional characteristics. Although teachers acquire theoretical knowledge during their university studies on how to develop students through assessment, there are neither guidelines nor output requirements; therefore, the learning process of fulfilling this aim happens in their daily teaching practice, which leads to autonomous, lifelong learning. There have been only a few pieces of research in connection with assessment in Hungary focusing on ways that aim to fulfill roles other than grade giving. This paper aims to explore teachers' views on, motivations for, purposes, and ways of using alternative assessment. For this exploratory study, four semi-structured interviews were conducted, transcribed, and analyzed with the constant comparative method. Purposive sampling was applied in order to explore the views of Hungarian secondary school teachers already using ways of alternative assessment. Findings show that teachers are using alternative assessment methods because they find grading insufficient to fulfill several roles. Moreover, in their opinion, it might even hinder the development of certain skills, as a result of which, they feel the need to learn and innovate in their assessment methods.