Assessment Knowledge Needs of EFL Teachers

Abstract

Within recent advances in education, teachers are expected to be aware of and apply effective procedures of instruction and assessment to enhance learning. This requires teacher education programs to provide opportunities for teachers to improve their knowledge in different areas, including assessment knowledge, to meet the new challenges. To help EFL teachers to improve their language assessment knowledge (LAK), the first step is to have information on their present status of LAK. Therefore, this study was designed to investigate the LAK needs of EFL teachers. Fulcher’s needs assessment questionnaire (2012), expanded by some open-ended questions, was administered to 246 EFL teachers to explore their perceptions of the importance of major issues in language assessment and the level of their own knowledge. The findings revealed that the majority of the participants considered the major topics in language assessment as either essential or important to be included in language assessment courses. However, major differences were found between the priorities given to these topics by various groups of teachers. Further, it was observed, in line with the findings of previous research, that EFL teachers claimed they needed to improve their LAK. Details of the findings and implications for teacher education programs are discussed.

Keywords

• assessment knowledge, efl teachers, language assessment knowledge, needs
• professional knowledge