Abstract:
Despite being trained in pre-service teacher education programs, most EFL teachers are underprepared when faced with language assessment-related activities. Part of the problem emanates from the fact that Language Assessment Literacy (LAL) as a construct has not been well defined by experts. The purpose of this study was to pinpoint the components of LAL in the Iranian EFL context using an adapted version of Fulchers' (2012) LAL survey with two types of constructed and closed response items. The participants were 280 English language teachers from seventeen different provinces in Iran. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and cross validation were used to define LAL as a construct. Furthermore, qualitative data analysis procedures were employed to analyze the data obtained from constructed response items. The results indicate that LAL in the Iranian context is comprised of four factors, namely: test design and development, large-scale standardized testing and classroom assessment, beyond-the-test aspects (which mainly includes social and ethical aspects of language testing/assessment), and reliability and validity. Furthermore, the results show that the EFL teachers in this study believe that besides the theoretical issues of assessment, they should also receive hands-on skills-based instruction in language assessment. These results can have direct implications for future teacher education programs with the aim of enhancing EFL teachers' LAL
Machine summary:
The results indicate that LAL in the Iranian context is comprised of four factors, namely: test design and development, large-scale standardized testing and classroom assessment, beyond-the-test aspects (which mainly includes social and ethical aspects of language testing/assessment), and reliability and validity.
However, there are two previous research projects related to Iranian EFL teachers' assessment literacy which merit mention here; in one study, test characteristics, test development, and testing language components/skills were found to be the top three areas that Iranian EFL teachers felt they needed to improve (Farhady {View the image of this page} Tavassoli, 2015).
Based on the findings of one of these studies, test characteristics, test development, and testing language components/skills were the top three areas that Iranian EFL teachers felt they needed to improve and were considered as part of LAL construct (Farhady, {View the image of this page} Tavassoli, 2015).
Demographics of the Participants Categories N Gender Age Education level Teaching Experience Male Female 21-25 26-30 31-35 36-40 41-45 51-55 Missing High school graduate BA MA PhD Other Missing 0-5 years 5-10 years 10-20 years More than 20 years Missing 85 195 110 90 53 15 7 1 4 7 93 148 17 14 1 152 65 27 5 31 Data Collection and Analysis According to Fulcher (2012), the LAL survey deals with the issue of "What are the assessment needs of language teachers?" (p.