Designing and validating a potential assessment inventory for assessing ELTs’ assessment literacy

Abstract

Abstract English teachers’ assessment literacy has always been considered as an important factor in their performance. However, no instrument has ever been developed to assess this construct among Iranian EFL teachers. To fill this gap, in the first phase of the present study, a theoretical framework for the main four components of teacher assessment literacy, named validity, reliability, interpretability of the results, and efficiency, was developed through extensive review of the related literature and conducting interviews with PhD candidates of TEFL. In the second phase, a questionnaire was developed and piloted with 106 participants who took part in the study through the rules of convenience sampling. More specifically, the 30 items of the newly developed “ELTs’ Assessment Literacy” questionnaire were subjected to factor analysis which revealed the presence of all the four components consisting of different number of items. These phases led to the development of a questionnaire with four components and 25 items on the basis of a 5-point Likert scale that measured (1) “Validity” including 14 items, (2) “Reliability” including seven items, (3) “Interpretability of the Results” including only one item, and (4) “Efficiency” including three items. The findings of this study may shed lights on this subject and help researchers and teaching practitioners assess EFL teachers’ assessment literacy and make principled decisions as far as assessment is concerned.

Keywords

• Assessment
• Assessment literacy
• Validity
• Reliability
• Interpretability
• Efficiency