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Contextual Factors that Affect Singapore Secondary School Teachers’ Assessment Literacy

There exist studies such as that of James and Pedder (2006), Brown (2004), Hargreaves, Earl, and Schmidt (2002) which purport to measure teachers’, assessment conceptions and practices. However, there has not been any known study that seeks to explore the contextual factors which affect the teachers’, assessment literacy. These factors, both socially and contextually value-laden, are likely to influence and/or affect teachers’, conceptions of assessment. While teacher literacy regarding assessment principles has been emphasized in preservice training and inservice professional development (Popham, 2009, Stiggins, 2004), such training and development do not occur in vacuums, but are carried out and accepted by people, coming from and embedded within the varied cultures and contexts. As each school is different and performance on assessment literacy may most likely be judged by people operating in these different cultures, what may actually be implemented and operationalized are likely to be subject to peculiarities of these social cultures (Fullan, 2010, Wiggins, 1993). Hence, this study addresses the gap of bridging these missing and yet, essential elements of understanding teachers’, conceptions of assessment. A new, 41-item instrument was developed based on Kozma’,s (2003) framework of micro, meso, and macro-level contextual factors and focus group discussion with teachers, school leaders, and teacher educators. The draft instrument was refined through further teacher interviews to improve legibility and interpretation of the item stems. After pilot testing and analysis with RateFOLD (Luo &, Andrich, 1999), a final version was developed with 30 items, and is currently under further study.Keywords: contextual factors, RateFOLD, micro, meso, macro levels

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