THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ASSESSMENT LITERATE

The term 'assessment literacy', coined by R.J. Stiggins in the early 1990s, refers to knowing how and what we are assessing, the best way to assess specific aspects of the teaching-learning process, how to generate reliable data about our students’ performance, which problems to expect and, finally, what to do to avoid them (Coombe et al., 2012).

Assessment literacy is directly linked to (language) teacher education due to its close connection with professional competence and performance. As a consequence, there are several problems that may arise when teachers’ assessment literacy is insufficient. The first we could mention is that teachers will not encourage their students to act critically in relation to teachers’ feedback. This is very important, as it’s the teachers’ role to show students that requesting, reflecting upon and working on feedback is essential for their knowledge development.

The second problem is that, by not knowing much about assessment, teachers do not prepare students to deal with it and act in accordance with their interests when their performance is being assessed. In other words, students are not taught that assessment matters much more than the grades they receive.

The third problem is teachers not being open to criticism in relation to how they assess. As they are not aware of the big picture, that is, of the role of assessment in students’ progress and in their own professional development, teachers receive every comment, suggestion or complaint as an insult or attack and turn their backs to it, thus missing the opportunity of reflecting on their assessment practices.

Another problem refers to teachers (and school authorities in general) not guiding students (and their parents, if that is the case) with respect to how to interpret the scores attributed by teachers. By understanding what the scores mean in terms of language learning development, students can focus on their strengths and work more intensively on their weaknesses. Thus, transparency in terms of the meaning of scores goes hand in hand with formative assessment.

The fifth and last problem worth mentioning is that, by not giving assessment its proper importance, neither the school nor the community in general understand what quality assessment is and do not know how to identify problematic assessment. Therefore, there is no public demand for better assessment practices and potential benefits are completely lost.

In face of the usual lack of information about assessment, Stiggins (1991) presents a proposal divided into three actions. The first one is to understand the concept of assessment literacy. That means developing knowledge about the wide range of objectives in terms of students’ performance, learning results and available assessment methods so as to give support to an efficient teaching-learning process.

The second action proposed by Stiggins (1991) is to distinguish levels of assessment literacy. This implies developing and improving it according to the needs of different social groups. Such groups would be divided into three: (1) the group that needs functional literacy, that is, people who use data produced by someone else and need to interpret and use such data to make decisions; (2) the group who needs practical literacy, that is, people who produce and use data; and (3) the group that needs advanced literacy, that is, high-stakes exam designers and those who work with educational measurement.

The third action Stiggins (1991) proposes is to develop assessment literacy programmes, which would involve courses and training to users and stakeholders (pre-service and in-service teachers, teacher educators, material designers, educational

authorities, among others).

Stiggins’ three actions are highly important and make us realize that we do not need to know everything about assessment, but we do need to master the assessment knowledge that is expected from the role we play. So, for example, if I am a school principal and receive my school scores from a national exam, I need to be functionally literate to understand what those scores mean in order to decide on school changes and improvement. If I am a language teacher, I need to have practical literacy so as to plan how to best generate information about my students’ learning progress and how to make good use of such information both in terms of feedback and accountability. Finally, if I am involved with high-stakes exams or am in charge of educational analysis, I need more advanced assessment literacy, which might involve statistical knowledge, for instance.

Regardless of our role in the (language) educational chain, being aware of what assessment entails and how it can be used for all stakeholders’ benefit is fundamental if

we aim at building a community with good assessment practices (Scaramucci, 2016) and conscious of the power assessment carries as a social practice.

References:

COOMBE, C.; TROUDI, S.; AL-HAMLY, M. Foreign and second language teacher

assessment literacy: issues, challenges, and recommendations. In: COOMBE, C.;

DAVIDSON, P.; O'SULLIVAN, B.; STOYNOFF, S. (Eds.) The Cambridge guide to

second language assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. p. 20-29.

SCARAMUCCI, M. V. R. Letramento em avaliação (em contexto de línguas): contribuições para a linguística aplicada, educação e sociedade. In: JORDÃO, C. M. (Org.) A Linguística Aplicada no Brasil: Rumos e Passagens. Campinas, SP: Pontes Editores, 2016. p.141-165.

STIGGINS, R. J. Assessment literacy. Phi Delta Kappan, v. 72, n. 7, p. 534-539, 1991.