Please read the following paper and write the abstract in 200 – 350 words.

Due date: 25 Nov 2024

Abstract
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1. Introduction
It has been widely acknowledged that assessing student performance is an essential elements of a
teacher’s job. Indeed, assessment is an integral part of the teaching and learning process (Ashraf,
Zolfaghari, 2018), hence teachers spend a significant amount of time engaging in assessment
activities (DeLuca, Klinger, 2010). Assessment of language learning is considered not only as a
means to monitor students’ progress and improve achievement but also to promote learning (Earl,
2003). In other words, assessment serves a variety of purposes (Brown, 2004; Djoub, 2017) and
is a crucial aspect of teachers’ classroom practice and professional life (Abell, Siegel, 2011;
Coombe et al., 2009). Hence, it is essential for teachers to have a sufficient level of assessment
literacy to assess students’ learning appropriately (DeLuca, Klinger, 2010; Koh et al., 2018; Koh,
2011).
Stiggins (1991) initially perceived assessment literacy as teachers’ understanding of underlying
principles as well as those skills required to assess student learning. Furthermore, those who are
assessment literate know what to assess, how to assess, what the potential problems would be
and what to do to alleviate the problems (Stiggins, 1995). ‘Assessment literacy’ has since
became a commonly used term, with researchers and practitioners attempting to conceptualise
the meaning of assessment literacy further. For example, Djoub (2017) asserts that assessment
literacy means that teachers have the ‘knowledge’ and ‘tools’ to know what and how to assess
based on particular objectives in addition to knowing what decisions to make in assessing
students’ achievement. Likewise, Koh et al. (2018) affirms that “a teacher’s assessment literacy
refers to her or his demonstrated understanding of the principles behind selecting and designing
tasks, judging student work, and interpreting and using assessment data to support student
learning”.
Assessment literacy concepts discussed above reinforce the substantial influence of teachers’
assessment practices to the quality of students learning (Coombs et al., 2018). It is argued that
literate teachers can integrate assessment with teaching (McMillan, 2003), hence are able to
accurately and efficiently draw inferences about students’ achievement, as well as to
communicate the results of the assessment to the relevant stakeholders (Brookhart, 1999). In
short, assessment literate teachers know the appropriate methods to use in collecting reliable data
about student performance, how to use assessment to support student learning and how to
communicate assessment results effectively and accurately.
Due to the central role of teachers’ assessment literacy, there have been an increasing number of
studies attempting to measure teachers’ assessment literacy, which involves gaining an insight
into teachers’ perceptions of assessment principles and their practices as what teachers perceive
would influence how they approach teaching and conduct assessment.
Studies in different contexts showed a variety of significant findings regarding teachers’
assessment literacy (e.g., DeLuca, Klinger, 2010b; Volante, Fazio, 2007). In the general
education field, for example, Yamtim and Wongwanich (2014) explored the assessment literacy
level of primary school teachers in Thailand using Metlers’ (2003) Classroom Assessment
Literacy Questionnaire, revealing that teachers had a low level of assessment literacy. In a more
recent study, Rahman (2018) researched secondary science teachers’ perceptions and practices of
classroom assessment, suggesting that teachers perceive classroom assessment as assessment of
learning and that what they claimed to practice was not practised in the classroom.
Specific to the English as a foreign language learning (EFL) context, Shim (2009) studied EFL
teachers' perceptions and practices regarding classroom-based assessment in Korean primary
education using a questionnaire and interview, revealing that although teachers were assessment
literate, they did not necessarily implement all knowledge of assessment principles into practice.
Similarly, Jannati (2015) found that Iranian ELT teachers were aware of the fundamental
principles of assessment, but their practices did not reflect this. Djoub (2017) examined the effect
of teachers’ assessment literacy on teachers’ practices. The data collected from teachers
worldwide through an online survey showed that they lacked assessment literacy and this was
reflected in their practices. Teachers in this context used assessment mostly for grading purposes,
instead of for improving students’ learning.
Despite the existence of extensive literature on assessment literacy with different context and
focus, limited studies exist on assessment literacy of EFL teachers, especially in Indonesia. It is
necessary to understand the different assessment literacy concepts and practice in different
settings, as some aspects of assessment literacy are context specific (Edwards, 2017; Willis et al.,
2013). Moreover, a teacher's approach to assessment comprising conceptual understanding as
well as practical knowledge related to student assessment within the situated context of their
classroom teaching (DeLuca et al., 2016). Hence, the current study responds to the call for
increased research in this area of assessment literacy (Edwards, 2017). This study explored how
EFL teachers perceive and practice the basic principles of classroom-based assessment i.e.,
planning, implementation, monitoring, as well as recording and dissemination (Shim, 2009). In
the context of the current study, Stiggins’ (1991) definition of assessment literacy of focusing on
what EFL teachers perceive and practice assessment in their particular context was adopted, thus
providing insights into the field of assessment literacy from the perspective of Indonesian EFL
junior high school teachers.
2. Methods
This study was aimed to address two research questions: 1) What are EFL teachers’ perceptions
of assessment? and 2) To what extent are teachers’ perceptions reflected in their practice? To this
end, a total of twenty-two Indonesian EFL teachers from six public junior high schools who
participated
in this study were surveyed and interviewed. Most participants were female (N = 18,81 %) aged
between 25 and 35 years old with two to more than ten years teaching experience. Consequently,
the current study does not represent the view of all EFL teachers in the Indonesian context.
Instrumentation
Data in the current study were collected through multiple methods. A questionnaire was
developed and distributed to the teacher participants to help identify their perceptions and
practices of assessment. The questionnaire was adapted from Shim (2009) and was composed of
the following parts:
1. Personal Information: consisted of seven items that had to be completed by the participant i.e.,
gender, age, years of experience, and position (EFL teacher, homeroom teacher).
2. General perceptions of language assessment: two essays utilising open-ended questions.
3. Working principles of assessment: consisted of forty items to be addressed using a five-point
scale: 5 = Strongly Believe, 4 = Believe, 3 = Neutral, 2 = Disbelieve, 1 = Strongly Disbelieve.
The items (40 items regarding perceptions and 40 items related to assessment practices) were
divided into four sub-aspects based upon the procedural principles of classroom-based
assessment, including teachers’ practice of planning, implementation, monitoring, and recording
and dissemination. This questionnaire was translated and then back translated for accuracy,
before being piloted to six EFL teachers in other schools and revised accordingly. The final
version was then piloted to another three teachers.

As Shim (2009) suggests, the questionnaire possesses high internal consistence with a
Cronbach’s alpha of 0.906 and 0.936.
To follow up findings from the questionnaire, a semi structure interview was conducted with five
teachers to confirm their different perceptions and assessment practices. The interview was
mainly based on general questions about assessment as well as their responses to the initial
questionnaire. Each interview lasted for fifteen to thirty minutes and was audio recorded. In
addition, a document study was also conducted to further verify data from the questionnaire and
interview. The gathered data included curriculum, syllabus, lesson plans, example of assessment
materials and students’ work.
Data analysis
As suggested by Shim (2009), quantitative data analysis was applied to analyse the data from the
questionnaire using SPSS to calculate the frequency, mean (M), and the standard deviation (SD)
of all the questionnaire items. Furthermore, a statistical t-test using SPSS was performed to
examine the significance of the gap between EFL teachers’ beliefs and their classroom practice.
In addition to the quantitative data analysis, the qualitative data from the interviews were
analysed using a procedure proposed by Rayford (2010). First, the interview was transcribed
verbatim, then the interview transcript was coded and coloured according to the emerging
themes. The two emerging themes and sub-themes are presented in Table 1 below.
3. Results
1) Teachers’ perception about assessment principles and their classroom practice
The questionnaire findings revealed that most teachers exercised language assessment in their
classroom practices. Table 2 below presents the frequency of assessment tasks they completed in
each semester.

As shown in Table 2 above, more than 50 % of teachers performed the assessment tasks more
than four times, indicating that these assessment practices were part of their normal routine.
Teachers considered the importance of assessment in their language instruction in the classroom,
for example, Clara said that she was always prepared for an assessment, while Santi planned
periodical assessment. Findings from the questionnaire also suggested that more than half of the
participant teachers also constructed their own assessments (68 %), as the tests in published work
books were not always available with the related materials.
In addition, as mentioned earlier in the method section, quantitative data analysis was performed
on the questionnaire data to investigate teachers’ procedural principles of classroom-based
assessment: planning, implementation, monitoring, and recording and dissemination. Table 3 and
Table 4 below present teachers’ planning assessment principle and the classroom practice
respectively.
From the Table 3 above, the propositions Q1, Q5, Q12, and Q14 obtained the highest score (M =
4.55), indicating that the teachers perceived that planning played a critical role in classroom
assessment, while the other prepositions (M > 3.50) suggested that teachers felt that they had
applied such planning principles in their classroom practice. However, little concern was given
to preposition Q8, showing that teachers felt that the assessment they had designed were able to
give them information about what students should know at a particular time. In addition, as
shown in Table 4, teachers’ perception of the planning principles was applied in classroom
practice. The preposition of Q14, Q1, and Q2 were shown to have higher scores, with M > 4.50,
indicating that teachers practised the planning principles in classroom settings.
In addition to the planning principles, the current study found that teachers felt they had
appropriate knowledge about what and how to apply classroom-based assessment. Table 5 and
Table 6 below
describe teachers’ perceptions and the classroom practice of the assessment implementation
principle.

From Table 5 above, the propositions Q19 and Q20 obtained the highest mean score in the
implementation stage (M = 4.59, SD = .503; M = 4.55, SD = .596), indicating that teachers
strongly agree that students should be supported when they encounter problem in completing
the
assessment task. Teachers also believed that they needed to provide their students with an
opportunity to monitor their own work and complete assessment tasks. This is interesting, as in
Table 6, teachers were shown to apply what they have already comprehended about assessment
implementation principles in the classroom settings (M > 3.50).
Table 7 and Table 8 below present the survey findings regarding teachers’ perceptions about
monitoring assessment principles and the classroom practices.
Table 9 above shows that all teachers generally agreed to all prepositions presented. The
preposition of Q36 had the highest score (M = 4.36, SD = 1.093), with the lowest for preposition
of Q37 (M = 3.86, SD = 1.651), indicating that the teachers strongly believed that they should
record the practices of assessment and disseminate the results to their colleagues, schools and
local education authority. More importantly, teachers felt that recording and disseminating their
assessment practices was important and would impact on their classroom practice. Table 10
showed teachers implemented the recording and disseminating in the classroom context. What is
interesting is that the proposition of Q40 seemed to be a dilemmatic principle to some teachers as
they did not frequently implement this principle.
In addition, the findings from the interviews were in line with the quantitative data analysis. In
the interview, teachers mentioned that they conducted assessment to measure students’
achievement, get feedback on instruction, and check students’ understanding of the lessons as
well as helping students with their learning. When developing an assessment plan, the teachers
said that they first should relate the assessment to the objectives of the lessons and to what had
been learned by the students. Furthermore, most teachers agreed that students should be advised
in advance of what they will be assessed on so that they could prepare and perform to their best.
In addition, as part of good planning, teachers should respect the privacy of the students and are
required to assure confidentiality. Teachers in this study gave an example of such practice, with
three teachers stating that in respect of students’ privacy, they did not announce the assessment
results publicly, returning the marked assessment to students individually for personal feedback
and to avoid embarrassment. One teacher said:
“I never announced assessment results publicly in front of the class. I want to respect students’
privacy. Some of them would get embarrassed if I do so. I handed students’ marked assessment
individually so that I can discuss students’ progress in private”. (Interview with Clara)
Nonetheless, two teachers claimed that although they recognised the importance of
confidentiality, they still announced the results of assessment publicly to motivate students. As a
teacher stated:
“I usually announced the results not only in one class but also in all classes I taught. I taught six
parallel classes of the same grade. I did this in order to motivate students so that they were
encouraged to achieve better next time”. (Interview with Risa)
All teachers in this study agreed that assessment plays a pivotal role in teaching and learning.
They provided reasons for conducting assessment and what constitutes a good assessment. These
data highlighted the ‘why and what’ of assessment from the teachers’ own perspectives.
2) Discrepancy between teachers’ perceptions about the assessment principles and their
classroom practice
As mentioned earlier in the method section, quantitative data analysis with a statistical t-test was
performed to identify any discrepancy between teachers’ perceptions about assessment principles
and their classroom practices, a summary of which is shown in the following Table 11:

These results suggested that there was a significant difference between what teachers perceived
about the assessment principles and their classroom practice, specifically on one aspect in the
implementation stages and four in the monitoring stage (p-value > .05). In the implementation
stage, teachers were shown to have appropriate knowledge that they should support students to
complete the assessment tasks (M = 4.59, SD = 0.503). For example, in the interview, teachers
asserted that good assessment should be clear in direction and have positive washback to
improve students’ learning. Unfortunately, the t-test result indicated that teachers did not seem to
apply such an assessment knowledge in real classroom practice, as they failed to provide clear
instruction to the student about what and how students were expected to do with the assessment
(t = 2.409, p < 0.05). In the interview, teachers asserted that:
“Assessment is a part of students’ learning activities. The assessment contents are of the material
the students have already learned. When we assign students with assessment tasks, we assume
that they [students] already know about what they are instructed to do. [It is] because the
contents in the assessment tasks strongly relate to the learning material. Thus, we do not think it
is necessary to give further explanation.” (Interview with Santi)
In the monitoring stage, the discrepancy between teachers’ perceptions and their classroom
practice was also evident as teachers did not seem to use the assessment results to improve their
teaching (t = 2.347, p < 0.05) and were reluctant to share the findings from their assessment with
other colleagues (t = 2.569, p < 0.05). Furthermore, teachers did not employ overall feedback to
improve students’ work and learning (t = 3.250, p < 0.05) and the process of assessment was not
supported by parents’ involvement (t = 2.339, p < 0.05). These were cases that in the interview,
teachers were observed to focus the assessment process on the students’ final score rather than
the overall learning process. For example, teachers expressed their utmost concern if students
failed to meet the targeted minimum completion criteria (KKM), exploring every alternative in
an attempt to support students to meet the KKM. One teacher, Maria asserted:
“If students’ score was still below the KKM, I conducted remedial teaching, assigned students
additional tasks they can take home, gave them opportunity to take another tests. It was my
responsibility to make sure they meet the KKM”.
In the interview, teachers expressed their worries regarding the parents’ lack of motivation to get
involved in their children’s learning. They mentioned:
“… not all parents paid attention to their children’s learning. They took teachers for granted and
hold us responsible for their children learning. I contacted some parents to advise them of their
children achievement. However, it seemed only those educated parents responded and paid
attention and took action. Less educated parents seemed to ignore my message. I even sent
personal WhatsApp message to some parents but nothing changed. Their children still did not do
homework etc.”
4. Discussion
This study investigated EFL teachers’ assessment literacy through their perceptions and practices
of assessments within the classroom context. The questionnaire results indicated that teachers
had a good knowledge of assessment, as well as good assessment practice showing good
planning, implementation, monitoring, recording and dissemination stages, although there were
some discrepancies in the implementation and monitoring stages. This finding was different from
several previous studies, in which teachers were found to be illiterate (DeLuca, Klinger, 2010;
Jannati, 2015); or teachers were literate but did not put their knowledge into practice (Shim,
2009).
As a whole, the current study indicated that teachers seemed to practice assessment for learning
(AfL), with most teachers conducting assessments to support student’s learning and using
assessment results as feedback on their instruction. Teachers also attempted to be transparent in
their assessment practice by advising students on what they will be assessed on and some
teachers maintained the students’ privacy in relation to assessment results. However, findings
from the interviews and document study revealed that although teachers claimed that they
performed good practice, there was no evidence to confirm the quality of such practice. For
example, teachers claimed to provide feedback as common assessment practice, giving
immediate feedback, but there was no proof as to whether the feedback provided was of high
quality to facilitate students’ reflection on their learning. Immediate and quality feedback is
indeed important to assist students’ learning and achievement (Hattie, Timperley, 2007). It was
also found that feedback was not only conducted to improve students’ learning but also to assist
students in meeting the standard set by the institution. These results were consistent with
Jannati's (2015) findings that some teachers focused on improving students’ achievement and
monitoring students’ progress, while others were concerned about the students’ final grade.
Furthermore, teachers’ use of assessment materials was also problematic. The document study
revealed that teachers utilised assessment materials from published textbooks, but the quality of
the materials was questionable. Some assessment materials were mechanical, involving lower
order thinking skills, and were less authentic. As Koh et al. (2018) argue “pre-designed and/or
prescribe” materials were sometimes taken for granted by teachers, hence, affecting the quality
and credibility of the results. The same issue was identified with teacher-made assessments, as
most of them were in the form of multiple choice questions.
Hence, although teachers appeared to be committed to good assessment practices, the findings
showed that grading still seemed to be their major concern. The fact that teachers’ assessment
practices aimed at students’ meeting the KKM set by the school implies that teachers’ practices
were influenced by the local or school policy or regulations (Brown, 2004; Zoeckler, 2007).
Moreover, teachers incorporating non-achievement factors, such as attendance and attitudes,
when assigning grades was a representation of sociocultural factors in this particular context
(Zulaiha, 2017). This findings indeed support Willis' et al. (2013) claim that assessment is
cultural doings involving social factors that take place within particular contexts.
Perhaps one social factor in this particular context that also influenced the assessment process
was parents’ involvement. Teachers in this study felt supported when parents actively engaged in
their children’s learning, such as helping with homework. Parent involvement is, in fact,
important in foreign language learning as it facilitates children’s English development (Forey et
al., 2016). Teachers claimed that parents’ involvement was influenced by their educational level,
but Chi and Rao (2003) assert that it may be due to time availability as well as parents’ foreign
language proficiency.
5. Conclusion
In conclusion, in general, the teachers in this study were assessment literate and aware of the
principles of classroom-based assessment, reporting that they put most principles into practice.
However, a question remains as to whether their assessment practice was of high quality. This
study had some limitations, indeed, only a small number of participants were involved due to
time constraints and resources, hence limiting the generalisability of the findings. It is
recommended that future research should involve a larger sample of teachers from different
contexts as well as relevant stakeholders. Despite these limitations, the findings contribute to a
better understanding of teachers’ assessment literacy in their particular context, as they make
meaning and interact with assessment materials and relevant stakeholders of assessment.