Chinese Primary School Mathematics Teachers’ Assessment Profiles: Findings from a Large-Scale Questionnaire Survey

International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, Aug 2017

This study investigated Chinese primary school mathematics teachers’ views on assessment in an effort to determine their assessment profiles. A large-scale questionnaire survey with 1101 teachers from 12 Chinese provinces and regions was carried out. The teachers reported to use assessment on a daily or weekly basis for different purposes. They recognized the importance of assessing different types of skills and knowledge and considered assessment useful for improving teaching and learning. To determine teachers’ assessment profiles, we used several latent variable modeling techniques. With exploratory factor analyses, we identified eight factors in the teachers’ responses: general instructional decision-making assessment purposes [1], specific instructional decision-making assessment purposes [2], assessment methods [3], diversity of assessment problem format [4], importance of assessing skills and knowledge [5], importance of assessing extra-curricular skills [6], Perceived usefulness [7], and acceptance of assessment [8]. When these factors were used to interpret the results of a latent class analysis, three distinct assessment profiles could be distinguished. One fifth of the teachers were in the Enthusiastic assessors profile. These teachers not only reported to use assessment frequently [3, 4] and purposefully [1, 2], but also highly endorsed its importance [5, 6] and usefulness [7, 8]. Around half of the teachers were in the Mainstream assessors profile; these teachers scored close to the mean on all factors. The remaining teachers held the relatively negative views on assessment and were therefore in the Unenthusiastic assessors profile. This profile characterization sheds light on Chinese primary school mathematics teachers’ assessment culture.

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Chinese Primary School Mathematics Teachers’ Assessment Profiles: Findings from a Large-Scale Questionnaire Survey

Chinese Primary School Mathematics Teachers' Assessment Profiles: Findings from a Large-Scale Questionnaire Survey Xiaoyan Zhao 0 1 Marja Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen 0 1 Michiel Veldhuis 0 1 0 Freudenthal Group, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Utrecht University , Heidelberglaan 1, Langeveld Building, 3584 CS Utrecht , the Netherlands 1 Freudenthal Institute, Faculty of Science, Utrecht University , Princetonplein 5, Buys Ballot Building, 3584 CC Utrecht , the Netherlands This study investigated Chinese primary school mathematics teachers' views on assessment in an effort to determine their assessment profiles. A large-scale questionnaire survey with 1101 teachers from 12 Chinese provinces and regions was carried out. The teachers reported to use assessment on a daily or weekly basis for different purposes. They recognized the importance of assessing different types of skills and knowledge and considered assessment useful for improving teaching and learning. To determine teachers' assessment profiles, we used several latent variable modeling techniques. With exploratory factor analyses, we identified eight factors in the teachers' responses: general instructional decision-making assessment purposes [1], specific instructional decision-making assessment purposes [2], assessment methods [3], diversity of assessment problem format [4], importance of assessing skills and knowledge [5], importance of assessing extra-curricular skills [6], Perceived usefulness [7], and acceptance of assessment [8]. When these factors were used to interpret the results of a latent class analysis, three distinct assessment profiles could be distinguished. One fifth of the teachers were in the Enthusiastic assessors profile. These teachers not only reported to use assessment frequently [3, 4] and purposefully [1, 2], but also highly endorsed its importance [5, 6] and usefulness [7, 8]. Around half of the teachers were in the Mainstream assessors profile; these teachers scored close to the mean on all factors. The remaining teachers held the relatively negative views on assessment and were - therefore in the Unenthusiastic assessors profile. This profile characterization sheds light on Chinese primary school mathematics teachers’ assessment culture. Introduction Assessment is crucial for teaching and learning at all educational levels and across all school subjects. Without assessment, it is hard to determine whether students have achieved the intended goals and to make instructional decisions about how students can best be helped to reach these goals. This latter purpose of assessment, which focuses on supporting the students’ further learning, has gotten more attention over the last 20 years. Awareness has arisen that assessment should not only serve summative purposes, for example, using it for grading students, but should place more emphasis on formative purposes, such as informing teachers’ instruction and improving students’ learning (e.g., Assessment Reform Group, 1999; Black & Wiliam, 1998; Stiggins, 2002) . Another change in the assessment policy and practice is that assessment is increasingly put in the hands of the teachers, because they are considered to be in a good position for collecting information about their students’ learning (Harlen, 2007) . This means that assessment is interwoven with instruction as an on-going process, which offers teachers direct information to make adequate instructional decisions, in order to cater their students’ needs and, in this way, can raise the achievements of their students. Several studies have evidenced this power of teachers’ assessment activities to improve students’ mathematics learning (e.g., Cauley & McMillan, 2010; Phelan, Choi, Vendlinski, Baker, & Herman, 2011; Veldhuis & Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, 2014a; Wiliam, Lee, Harrison, & Black, 2004) . As a result of these promising findings, the teachers’ assessment practice has become a key factor in improving mathematics education and has been put on the policy agendas in many countries (Berry, 2011) . In line with this, investigations have been carried out all over the world to find out mathematics teachers’ current assessment practice and beliefs on assessment. The present study is meant to do such an investigation in China to gain knowledge about how primary school mathematics teachers in China consider and perform assessment in their teaching. Literature Review Teachers’ Assessment Practice and Beliefs Through surveys based on interviews (e.g., in Finland: Krzywacki, Koistinen, & Lavonen, 2011; in the USA: Riggan & Oláh, 2011; in Canada: Suurtamm, Koch, & Arden, 2010) and questionnaires (e.g., in Canada: Suurtamm et al., 2010; in China: Ni, Li, Li, & Zou, 2011; in the Netherlands: Veldhuis et al., 2013) , it was found that teachers reported to use various assessment methods. Particularly, it seems that teachers tend to use observation-based assessment methods, like questioning, observing, and c (...truncated)


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Xiaoyan Zhao, Marja Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, Michiel Veldhuis. Chinese Primary School Mathematics Teachers’ Assessment Profiles: Findings from a Large-Scale Questionnaire Survey, International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 2017, pp. 1-21, DOI: 10.1007/s10763-017-9841-3