Swedish and Finnish Pre-Service Teachers’ Perceptions of Summative Assessment Practices

Abstract

Summative assessments are an exercise of authority and something that pupils cannot easily appeal. The importance of teachers being able to assess their pupils correctly is consequently both a question of national equivalence and individual fairness. Therefore, summative assessment is a paramount theme in teacher education, and we aimed to investigate the perceptions and competence of student teachers regarding common summative assessment practices. The study was conducted at three universities, two in Sweden and one in Finland involving prospective language teachers responding to an online survey (N = 131). In addition, interviews were carried out with 20 Swedish and 6 Finnish student teachers. The analysis of the data indicates that student teachers value practices that enhance communication and collaboration as well as the curricular alignment of summative assessments. With respect to perceived competence, the respondents in general felt most confident with deploying traditional forms of summative assessment, while they were more uncertain about process evaluation and oral skills. Regarding significant differences in the participants’ perceptions of competence among the three universities, Finnish university students reported higher levels in all variables. However, room for improvement was found at all universities involved.

Keywords

• language teaching
• assessment literacy
• summative assessment
• teacher education
• pre-service teacher education