Abstract:
A new survey instrument on Teachers Conceptions of Assessment in Chinese contexts has been developed and validated with confirmatory factor analysis of responses from Hong Kong and South China primary and secondary school teachers. The factor model identifies four main conceptions (i.e., “irrelevant”, “accountability”, “improvement”, and “examination”) with the latter three being multifaceted. This paper reports an exploratory study designed to explain the purposes and uses for a self-selected sample of classroom assessment tasks of four primary school curriculum leaders in Hong Kong Chinese medium schools. A combination of methods – qualitative interviewing and self-scoring of their confidence to the use of these assessment tasks in achieving different conceptions – was used. Results indicated although “improvement” was often quoted as the reason to why the selected assessment tasks facilitate students’ learning, their thought of having the tasks to meet the functions of “accountability” and “examination” is still unyielding. The work reported here will contribute to gaining an understanding of the relationship between assessment policy and practice in the Chinese context and how Hong Kong’s “assessment for learning” policy is conveyed to the classrooms in such a context.