SURVEYING PRE-SERVICE EFL TEACHERS’ CONCEPTIONS OF ASSESSMENT: IMPLICATION FOR TEACHER EDUCATION

Abstract

Critical to the educational process, assessment outcomes are among the most trustworthy measures of the efficacy of the teaching-learning process. Nevertheless, there has been little attention on how pre-service EFL teachers interpret assessment. This study seeks to fill a need by investigating how pre-service EFL teachers conceptualize their conceptions of assessments while working in classrooms during their practicum experiences. The study also aims to identify any connections between various conceptions of assessment purposes. The participants that took part in this study were 42 pre-service EFL teachers who willingly agreed to take part. Descriptive statistics revealed that, of the two conceptions, improvement conception was the most valuable and irrelevance conception the least. According to the correlation data, there was a strong and positive relationship between improvement, school accountability, and student accountability. Conversely, the ideas of irrelevance and progress were inversely related. These findings suggest that in order to accomplish shared objectives, teachers, elected representatives, and curriculum developers will need to work together with the government. There has to be harmony in the emergence of national and school assessment policies so that they do not clash with the values and pedagogical stances of the future English teachers.