What teachers think about assessment and how it influences their classroom-based assessment practices – the results of a global survey

This paper considers teachers’ attitudes to assessment. The attitudes were explored through Borg’s (2015) Language Teacher Cognition Framework. A mixed-methods approach of questionnaire and interview was adopted. The online survey was completed by English language teachers working in 57 different countries worldwide. The questionnaire was divided into 3 sections. The first section included questions which related to the participants’ experiences of assessment at school. The second section explored the participants’ assessment training experiences both in their initial teaching training and in any professional development sessions they had attended. The third and final section explored the participants’ assessment practices and their beliefs about assessment. These three sections are based on the Language Teacher Cognition Framework. The interviews were conducted to explore the reasoning behind the responses given to the questionnaire. The framework also informed the data analysis process. Classroom experiences and professional development sessions were found to have the most influence on the teachers’ attitudes to assessment. The participants were influenced by their experiences of assessment at school as they choose to avoid replicating the assessment practices which had been used when they were being assessed.