What are the Effects of the Change in the Assessment Systems on the Alignment between Curriculum, Teaching and Assessment? A Case in Korean Middle Schools

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze how the various assessment systems affecting middle school English education has changed over the recent decade, investigate the effects of these assessment system changes on alignment between curriculum, teaching and assessment, and find implications for effective middle school English education. Document analysis was used to address the changes in the assessment system over the recent decade. It identified that there was a great change in the assessment system in that period. The assessment within middle schools was changed from NRTs to CRTs in 2012, which has affected the high school admission process since 2012. In the CSAT, the assessment of English subject has experienced a change from NRTs to CRTs since 2018. In addition, the NAEA has changed from assessing all 3 graders in middle school and 2 graders in high school to only assessing students from sampled schools since 2017. As a result, the assessment systems which were criticized as a significant barrier that distorted middle school English education due to negative washback effect have been improved. Secondly, a questionnaire survey showed respondents' positive perceptions regarding their practice to the alignment at all stages of planning, teaching, and assessment. However, issues not corresponding to their positive perception were identified in the implementation process. Thirdly, it was confirmed that there was a consistent difference in the perception among teachers by school levels as to the effect of changes in the assessment systems on the alignment. Particular attention needs to be paid to the significant difference between the results of middle and high school teachers in almost all the issues. This suggests that the difference between of middle and high school teachers should be reflected on English education policy along with the change in the assessment systems.

Assessment Policy in Korean EFL Classrooms : An Ethnographic Exploration of Assessment Planning Practices

“…This suggests EFL teacher training may reflect MOE policies and guidelines, but teachers are only given a mere review of documents instead of helpful training that could be directly applied to assessment in their classrooms. Lee (2019) also found that the…”

“…For example, in Korea, ever since English was selected as the primary foreign language, English education policies have attracted attentions from researchers. In particular, a large body of research has focused on assessment policy in English education (e.g., Jeon, 2009;Jeon & Lee, 2017;Lee, 2019). One reason is that language assessment plays a powerful role, while being utilized as a tool to grant privilege or advantages to people with certain forms and levels of language knowledge in implementing language policy (Shohamy, 2007).…”

“…However, little is known about how the language assessment policies are reflected in local EFL classrooms and how classroom teachers as policy agents interpret these policies to create their own classroom assessment plans and policies. A few studies have attempted to explore the topic in the context of Korean EFL education, only to find that either top-down policy may have distorted the function of public education (Kwon et al, 2017) or policies around classroom assessment were not successfully implemented due to a lack of training (Chung & Nam, 2018) or contextual factors (Lee, 2019). Kwon et al (2017) discussed how the EBS-CSAT linkage policy misled many teachers and students to neglect textbooks, which was not the intended impact of such a policy on classroom teaching.…”

“…The Korean government and the Ministry of Education (MOE) have been creating new policy measures to reduce negative washback of the CSAT in recent decades, but the reality in classrooms still seems to be strongly affected by the washback (Kwon et al, 2017). With the Reform of University Admission Systems (MOE, 2018b), the "deliberative process" has been added to the modified university entrance systems (Lee, 2019) and the Comprehensive School Report Policy (Joo & Kim, 2017) has been in effect to address the issues around the CSAT and college entrance process. Coupled with the reform of admission processes, the Achievement Assessment System (MEST, 2011) and the Public Education Normalization Promotion Act (2016) were also enacted in local schools to reduce the excessive competition among students, to prohibit teaching to the tests, and to increase transparency and fairness in assessment.…”

Washback of the performance-based test of reading for EFL learners

“…The change of the test type might change how the teachers perceive their role in assessment. A study by Lee (2019) reported that the change in the assessment system affected the status of English teachers in middle schools in Korea from test adopters to test developers. Such a finding is certainly promising, especially in the Indonesian context, because right now the government campaigns the implementation of authentic assessment to complement the traditional ones.…”