Irish post-primary teachers’ conceptions of assessment at a time of curriculum and assessment reform

ABSTRACT

The study at the heart of this paper was conducted in 2017 to gather data on Irish post-primary teachers’ conceptions of assessment at the time immediately following the introduction of a revised policy for assessment by the Department of Education and Skills (DES). Central to the reform policy was an increased emphasis on formative assessment and a requirement that teachers engage in summative assessment for certification purposes – something that had never applied previously. The paper provides an overview of the literature on teachers’ beliefs, including Brown’s (2004, 2006) Teachers’ Conceptions of Assessment Inventory. Data from an implementation of the inventory with 489 Irish teachers are used to consider how they conceive of assessment, how these conceptions compare and contrast with those held by teachers in other jurisdictions where the instrument has been used and how the data might be used to inform policy change and implementation in Ireland.

KEYWORDS:

• Conceptions of assessment
• assessment reform
• assessment policy
• post-primary
• Ireland

Disclosure statement

The Centre for Assessment Research, Policy and Practice in Education (CARPE) is supported by a grant from Prometric Inc, a testing services provider headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. The views expressed in the paper are solely the responsibility of the authors and have not been influenced in any way by Prometric Inc.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. It replaced the Intermediate Certificate programme which had been in place since 1924.

2. Also referred to as school-based assessment (SBA) in some of the literature e.g., Murchan (2018).

3. Brown (2008) noted that balanced response anchors often restrict variance when respondents are inclined to be positive towards the psychological object being rated. Therefore, he opted for ‘four shades of positive orientation’ (p. 64).

4. Most non-completions occurred at the point where respondents were asked to give their consent or to complete the demographic information section.

5. All percentages in the paper are rounded to the nearest whole number.

6. The Kaiser-Meyer-Oklin value of.825 and the fact that Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity was significant (p =.000) provided evidence to support the use of EFA with these data.

7. The rationale for this criterion is based on standard error of.25 if the loading was 0.0.

Additional information

Funding

The Centre for Assessment Research, Policy and Practice in Education (CARPE) and the Prometric Chair in Assessment at DCU are supported by grants from Prometric Inc, a testing services provider headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. 

Notes on contributors

Marie Darmody

Marie Darmody’s research interests are focused on learning, teaching, curriculum and assessment at the post-primary level. She holds a doctoral degree from Dublin City University and currently works as a post-primary teacher of Gaeilge (Irish) and French.

Zita Lysaght

Zita Lysaght is a member of the School of Policy and Practice at the Institute of Education, Dublin City University. She coordinates and teaches classroom assessment and research methodology modules on undergraduate, masters and doctoral programmes.

Michael O’Leary

Michael O’Leary holds the Prometric Chair in Assessment at Dublin City University where he also directs the Centre for Assessment Research, Policy and Practice in Education (CARPE). He leads a programme of research at CARPE focused on assessment across all levels of education and in the workplace.