A long walk to language assessment literacy: EFL teachers’ reflection on language assessment research and practice

ABSTRACT

Language assessment literacy (LAL), an important piece of language teacher education puzzle, has not fully fallen into place as many language teachers remain underprepared for bridging language assessment research-practice gaps in classrooms. Reflection, as another critical dimension of teachers’ professional development (PD), could assist the teachers in promoting their language assessment practice. Through employing asynchronous online discussions, reflective narratives, semi-structured interviews, and scenarios, this study documents how reflection on the practical relevance of recent assessment research helped the Iranian EFL teachers examine their current classroom assessment practices and reassess their planning of future language assessment actions. The findings demonstrated that teachers’ reflection on research-based theories (reflection-on-research) and language assessment practices (reflection-on-action) were compatible and guided their reflection on planning their future language assessment performance (reflection-for-action). Teachers were also motivated to provide practical suggestions for further development of their LAL.

KEYWORDS:

• Language assessment
• reflection
• reflective practice
• teacher education
• professional development
• teacher’s voice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Esmat Babaii

Esmat Babaii is a professor of Applied Linguistics at Kharazmi University, Iran, where she teaches research methods, language assessment, and discourse analysis to graduate students. She has served on the editorial boards and/or the review panels of several national and international journals. She has internationally published articles and book chapters in her areas of interest, i.e. language assessment  and discourse analysis.

Fatemeh Asadnia

Fatemeh Asadnia is a PhD graduate of Applied Linguistics. She is currently working as a visiting lecturer at Kharazmi University, Iran. Her areas of research interest include teacher education (TE), computer-assisted language learning (CALL), and English for Specific Purposes (ESP). She has co-authored some articles in national and international journals.