Keynote Address: Preparing Assessment Literate Teachers: A Feasible Balance of Educational Policy with Research and Practice?

 

Over time, the efforts made by policymakers, teacher educators, and administrators clearly show how the intersection of teacher education and assessment practice matters in raising education quality. In this perspective, the improvement of teacher assessment literacy represents one of the most pressing contemporary educational policy and practice issues. Although educational research, for nearly more than 60 years, has scrutinized what teachers should essentially know and be able to do with assessment, the concept of assessment literacy remains, per se, a complex and contested concept, difficult to define.

The features of assessment-literate teachers have been progressively identified by mapping out the change they need in order to deal with accountability requirements and to ensure sound instructional decision-making and better learning for students. The concept of teacher assessment literacy, originally limited to measurement and testing practice, has been reshaped and enlarged by scholars. What’s more, the interest in formative assessment and the recognition of the socio-cultural nature of assessment practice has impressed a substantial change in conceptualizations of teacher assessment literacy.
 
Despite the increased importance accorded to assessment, teachers generally tend to have difficulties in transferring what they have learned in professional development paths into classroom practices. Professional development paths are not always linked to a systematic and critical review of teacher assessment practices and approaches. Moreover, the unprecedented times of the Covid-19 pandemic have made it more evident how, despite the broad literature on educational assessment, teachers struggle to navigate old and new instructional circumstances in their assessment practice. Thus, teacher assessment literacy and professional development have never been more significant than this before.

On the backdrop of the context-dependent nature of the teacher profession, this presentation will provide an overview of the current teacher assessment literacy conceptualizations and models. Furthermore, exploring recent research on the extent to which teachers actually enact classroom assessment, special attention will be given to teachers’ formative assessment literacy.

Encompassing the theoretical and practical plans of educational research, educational policy, and teacher education, this presentation offers an ideal opportunity for attendees to:

​

• Conceptualize what is, for them, teacher assessment literacy and why it is important to develop it;

• Understand which resources they can use to maximize the effects of assessment practice on teaching and student learning;

• Identify and analyze institutional, interpersonal, and personal learning mechanisms in developing of assessment literacy.