Identifying Canadian teacher candidates' needs for training in the use of inclusive classroom assessment

Abstract

To identify teacher candidates' needs for training in inclusive classroom assessment, the present study investigated teacher candidates' beliefs about inclusive classroom assessments for all students educated in regular classrooms, including those with special needs and English language learners. An innovative theoretical assessment model, consisting of four concepts of assessment for, as, of learning as well as accommodations and modifications, was built to compare with questionnaire responses from a group of Canadian teacher candidates (n = 295). Our data yielded five factors: (1) beliefs about accommodations and modifications for students with diverse needs (ACC), (2) assessment of learning, (3) assessment as learning, (4) misconceptions of inclusive assessment, and (5) negative beliefs about assessment for learning (NAFL). Contrary to expectations, assessment concepts are not fully interrelated with each other in teacher candidates' belief systems. In addition, participating teacher candidates may have some misconceptions about inclusive assessments given that they possessed positive beliefs towards them. The implications for teacher education programmes and professional development were also discussed in this study.

Keywords:

• classroom assessment
• inclusive assessment
• teacher education
• test accommodations

Notes on contributors

Pei-Ying Lin is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education at University of Saskatchewan in Canada. Her research interests include educational measurement methodology for studying assessment practices and policies for students with special needs and English language learners. Her current work focuses on in-service teachers and teacher candidates' beliefs about inclusive classroom assessment in international contexts, as well as undertaking an in-depth investigation of the equitability of accommodation policies and testing practices for students with diverse needs.

Yu-Cheng Lin is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at El Paso in the United States. Much of his work investigates language processing in students with diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds and quantitative methods for examining examinees' responses to test items. He has employed innovative cognitive psychology paradigms to examine how bilinguals process orthographic and phonological information in their native and second languages when their two languages have different linguistic properties and phonological unit sizes.