Conceptions of assessment when the teaching context and learner populations matter: Compulsory school versus non-compulsory adult education contexts

Abstract

This paper presents results of a study on teachers’ conceptions of assessment carried out on a sample of 493 teachers of Spanish as Foreign Language from all over the world. At the moment of data collection, the participants were members of an international online teacher community and were teaching at different professional contexts: basic compulsory school, and diverse extra-school teaching contexts, such as language academies and in-company education services. A self-report questionnaire was presented online to the teachers with 40 Likert items capturing their conceptions of assessment and habitual assessment practices. Confirmatory factor analysis was undertaken to contrast the theoretical model of departure. Results reveal a new bifactor model of conceptions of assessment, which we put in contrast with the prevailing literature in the field. More specifically, results point to differences in teachers’ conceptions of assessment depending on four aspects: how assessment affects the teaching process, the learning process, the certification of learning results, and the participants’ accountability to different audiences, such as colleague teachers, families, and the general society. Our results further put forward that the learners population, whether children-adolescents or adults, influences in teachers’ conceptions of assessment. This should lead researchers and practitioners to rethink teachers’ conceptions of assessment in a broader context than it has been considered to date.