Relationship Between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education -Thesis Project
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Transcript of Relationship Between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education -Thesis Project
Master´s thesis proposal
Erickzon D. Astorga Cabezas
Santiago, March 2012
Relationship between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
Productive skills measurement in TEFL context at a specific educational institution
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, our Society has given a huge importance to the professional formation and the
way of the responsible Educational Institutions are instructing its students to form integral
professionals. For this very reason, many Higher Education Institutions have been adopting
in their formal instruction of their majors a specific Teaching method called Competence
model (Schön, 1992). Although, this new Teaching is matched with the current social
demands, the practicality of it in each course is a real challenge both teachers
methodologies and the Institution, especially for English language instruction.
In my experience in Higher Education Institutions that are using before mentioned
Teaching, they normally determine its own methodologies and assessments for English
courses. For the former, they use a methodology closely related to Communicative
language teaching, because Competence model compel teachers to do classes using real
experience activities or simulated situations no matter what level of English students are. In
other words, English is mainly taught under a productive paradigm (speaking and writing
skills). However, when assessments and their key answers are designed and applied to their
students, they lack of productive exercises are obvious even they assess another skills. In
addition to this idea, when students of higher levels of English are assessed in terms of
productive skills, they do not produce effective English or they do not simply know how to
do it.
2 Relationship between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
For this very reason, my main concern is to see how coherent Assessment procedures and
Teaching are and their consequences in each process.
Therefore, in order to investigate in this issue, I will concentrate my investigations on three
big topics. One of them is Assessment in TEFL and Washback; the former is because its
controversial points related to the understanding of basic terminology used to describe
student performance, the measurement criteria of specific language abilities and
comprehension of the design, development and using of procedures to measure students
performance (Bachman, 1990). The latter, this concept is quite associated with the effect of
the tests on teachers, students, and their classroom behaviors (Alderson & Wal, 1993;
Hughes, 1989).
Also, we will deal with concept of Teaching that in capital letter is going to be understood
as methodology that some Higher Education Institutions recommend their teachers to focus
on their corresponding subjects. It is important to mention that English language course is
going to be our subject of interest.
Finally, we will refer to productive skills – Speaking and Writing- in terms of their
corresponding way to be assessed and taught in a TEFL context.
Having briefly checked the topics that are going to be used in our investigation, we can
clearly mention the reason of this review. This is intended to show the coherence between
English instruction of productive skills and assessment procedures to measure them in a
TEFL context (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) considering a specific Higher
Education Institution.
3 Relationship between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
This investigation has been prompted by the observation of an apparent mismatch between
assessment procedures that are intended to being aligned with a specific Teaching and the
focus of English teachers´ techniques to deal with mentioned assessment procedures.
Apparently, English learners may be wrongly assessed in terms of the designated purpose
of institutions of higher education (Klave; 2007). On the other hand, the process of
measurement in languages possesses some terms that are being freely used interchangeably
tending obscure the distinctive characteristics of each (Bachman, 1990; Van Blerkom,
2009). This may probably produce inappropriate development and use of language tests
(Allison, 1999)
It is especially important from the prior problems to establish a clear understanding based
on the need of real determination of assessment criteria in contrast with the English
teachers’ techniques (Knight, 1992), the understanding of procedures used to measure
students’ performance to design reliable and valid assessments in Languages (Bachman,
1990) and the main purpose is to make assessments congruent with the instructions and
align it to what students should be learning (Biggs, 2003)
LITERATURE REVIEW
This thesis will be supported by scholarly literature that is widely referred to Assessment
and Teaching in a Higher Education Context, of course all literature is thought to be applied
to TEFL context. Hence, in accordance with our research project, each of its general themes
is going to be resolved around the following topics:
4 Relationship between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
For assessment, early researches in TEFL context have tried to discover how English
learners can be properly assessed in terms of their language abilities and give better criteria
to be considered to measure English learners.
In 1990, Lyle Bachman proposed in his books and investigations the discussion of
fundamental issues that must be addressed at the start of any language testing effort,
whether this involves the design of new tests or the selection of existing ones. Also, he
states three important areas to be considered at the moment of developing and using
language tests such as the context that determine the uses of language tests; the nature of
the language abilities we want to measure and the nature of measurement (Bachman, 1990)
In 1995, J. Charles Alderson, Caroline Clapham and Dianne Wall, focusing more on
teachers, state principles of language ability test development both Education professionals
and to whom have some need to construct or evaluate language tests or examinations
(Alderson, Clapham & Wall, 1995)
In 2005, Charles R. Hancock proposes some methodologies to be used by English teachers
to make appropriate connections between language teaching and language testing. He
establishes also different forms to assess English learners introducing the most modern
methods to improve their language competence. (Hancock, 2005)
In 2007, David Boud and Nancy Falchivok wrote a book where they joined various authors
who developed the subject of Rethinking Assessment in Higher Education. From this book,
it is going to be mentioned Ronald Barnett who deals with Assessment in Higher Education
giving a conceptual point of view of Assessment. Also, we can propose to Steinar Kvale
who talks about the relationship between assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
5 Relationship between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
Institution as well as he gives a brief introduction about History of assessment in Higher
Education. Finally, some other authors assert more sustainable assessments to be used in
Higher Education Context.
Finally, in 2002 Sara Cushing Weigle and Sari Luoma exposed the nature of writing and
speaking skills, giving considerations and theory in relation to the whole process to
evaluate each of them (Luoma, 2004; Cushing, 2002)
For Teaching, in 1992 and 1988, Donald Schön reflects in terms of professional practice at
Universities giving principles how teachers thinks when they teach and the new design of
teaching and learning for future professionals. This approach currently leads the main
reason for some universities to choose the Competence Model to be used with their student
´s professional instruction. (Schön, 2011)
RESEARCH QUESTION
The aim of this research is to pay attention to the close relationship between Assessment
and Teaching in a TEFL context and the influence of the former on English teachers’
methods to instruct that language. This is mainly because it is believed that there is a lack
of connection between the Teaching adopted by Higher Education Institutions and its
assessment procedures. In turn, assessment procedures may be affecting teachers´
techniques to develop productive skills in language learners. For this very reason, this
thesis will attempt to answer the following specific research question:
6 Relationship between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
Research Question:
“HOW COHERENT ARE AIEP ´S ENGLISH ASSESSMENT
PROCEDURES WITH ITS TEACHING TO DEVELOP ORAL AND
WRITTEN COMPETENCE IN ITS HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS?”
In terms of my subsidiary questions, those are going to be helpful for us because they will
give the keys to focus our investigation only on our matter of interest; also, they will allow
us to decide what data collection techniques are more useful to be implemented in our
research. These important questions are the following:
“How do students perceive the relationship between English teachers´ techniques and
Aiep´s assessment procedures to evaluate their productive skills?”
“How do teachers perceive the relationship between Aiep´s Teaching and its
assessment procedures to evaluate students´ productive skills?”
RESEARCH RELEVANCE
The relevance of this research project is to examine how related Teaching, English
assessment procedures and English teachers techniques are. By doing so, we will let us
clarify essential aspects to achieve better English assessment instruments to measure
Higher Education student performance as well as improving English practice in classrooms.
Also, this research is going to be useful to understand how often second language learners,
for us English learners, are exposed to real language and produce them in their English
classes.
7 Relationship between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Our investigation is built under a Constructive Paradigm. This is because our methodology
will be qualitative by resorting to a phenomenological research approach in order to reveal,
from the perspective of participants, their perceptions about a specific phenomenon
(Jackson; Verberg, 2006). Therefore, we could say that people being studied are viewed as
participants or informants, not subject of this project (Creswell, 2009). Additionally, the
core of our activities to build this project is mainly focused on qualitative researches such
as literature review centered on showing how current findings fit into what is already
known, selection of participants, setting for data collection and finally data collection
methods and analysis (Jackson; Verberg, 2006).
SAMPLING
For our review, the participants are going to be English teachers of Auditing and Nursing
majors (3 for each major) and students from the same majors. The chosen branch of Aiep is
going to be Bellavista. The reason to select teachers and students is to contrast the
perception of them for the former in Aiep´s assessment and its Teaching and for the latter in
Aiep´s assessment and their English teachers’ method to instruct English.
The selection of participants will be through purposing sample (Jackson; Verberg, 2006).
The teachers are going to be selected at random and the number of them is going to be 4.
The students in Nursing courses are 45 per sections. The sections are only two; therefore,
the total number of students in Nursing is 90. In Auditing courses, the students are 35 per
sections. The sections are two as well; thus, the total number of students is 70. To sum up,
the total number between Nursing and Auditing students is 160. Therefore, we will utilize
8 Relationship between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
random selection through probability sampling (Briones, 1996). This is mainly because we
do not need any special requirement to choose students nor teachers; just we require enough
number of participants. Finally, we have to take into consideration that the level of English
of these students is English II. This is only because the students have to have experienced
assessment and teaching´s methods determined by Aiep.
DATA COLLECTION TECHNIQUES
For our investigation, three data collection techniques are going to be used.
Interviewing: When qualitative research takes the form of an interview, the interviewer
asks open-ended questions and simply records what the participant says. Personal bias can
be an issue, but other issues arise as well. For instance, the researcher may react to the
subject’s responses, encouraging or discouraging the dialogue in a certain direction.
Moreover, the researcher has to be careful that he does not ask leading questions (Seidman,
2006)
Questionnaires: Questionnaires are not among the most prominent methods in qualitative
research, because they commonly require subjects to respond to a stimulus, and thus they
are not acting naturally. However, they have their uses, especially as a means of collecting
information from a wider sample than can be reached by personal interview. Alternatively,
a questionnaire might be used in the first instance, followed by qualitative techniques on a
sample as a check and to fill out certain features of the questionnaire replies. (Gillham,
2007)
9 Relationship between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
DATA ANALYSIS
In order to analyze our selected data collection techniques, we are going to focus our
interview data and questionnaire data on a profound and detailed descriptive analysis and
coding. For these instruments, the data will be immediately examined avoiding
accumulation. This is mainly done to evade difficulties in results analysis. Additionally, it
is going to be created a system of registering of information to keep notes, observation,
interviews and others correctly filed. For the third instrument, Graphic representations,
cross-correlation coefficients or cross tabulation are going be used.
PROBLEMATICS
As we know researches in any field are not exempted from limitations; therefore, due the
fact that our review is focused on a qualitative research method, the most significant
problems that we may face are the following; Qualitative studies cannot provide grounds
for generalization from their cases, the consumption of time to negotiate access, assemble
sample and coding can be too extensive or sometimes qualitative studies can be too much
subjective among many other obstacles. However, these problems are not the only
limitations. Some others are closely related to the gathering and interpretation of key
information in our thesis´s methodological part.
Interviews Provide indirect information filtered through the views of interviewees,
researcher´s presence may bias response.(Creswell, 2009)
Questionnaires Use unnecessary questions
Wrong interpretation of results (Gillham, 2007)
10 Relationship between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
In order to avoid prior conflicts, we will have to use specific bibliography to ground rules
or norms to base and support our data collection techniques; also, it is going to be done a
piloting stage where some other teachers and students from different branches can give us
their feedback.
TIMEFRAME
There are many factors that could influence on our thesis in terms of its process and
elements. The following schedule is intended to organize our time to get the completion of
this study.
Research Timeline
Date Stage
January –
February 2012
Initial Literature Review / General theories related to the research
topic
March 2012 Final Literature Review / Preparation to apply pilot of data collection
techniques
April – May
2012
Application of data collection techniques /Revision and Interpretation
of questionnaires
June 2012 Interviewing participants / Revision and Interpretation of Interviews
July 2012 Data Analysis
August –
September 2012
Writing Result /Completion of the Study
October 2012 Thesis Submission
VALIDITY & RELIABILITY
We know that we, as researchers, need to check for accuracy of the finding and consistency
to be applied across different researchers and different projects (Creswell, 2009); in other
11 Relationship between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
words, we have to bear in mind terms of qualitative validity and reliability procedures
(Gibbs, 2007).
Validity Reliability Ethics
In order to validate data
collection techniques as a
whole. (Creswell, 2009)
* Triangulation of different
data sources of information by
examining evidence from the
sources and using it to build a
coherent justification for
themes.
In order to validate each data
collection technique.
(Creswell, 2009)
* Focus group and Interviews
are going to be provided with
rich and thick description to
convey the findings and clarify
bias.
* Questionnaires are going to
be validated using factor
analysis through correlations.
In order to make data
collection techniques reliable
as a whole. (Creswell, 2009)
* Make sure that there is not a
drift in the definition of codes,
a shift in the meaning of the
codes during the process of
coding.
In order to validate each data
collection technique.
(Creswell, 2009)
* Focus group -Interview
- Check transcription or
details.
- Determine the meaning of the
codes.
- Cross-check codes.
* Questionnaires
- Application to external
participants
- Piloting.
The main ethical
debates that our review
could face are conflicts
related to overt and
covert related to specific
information. Also, we
could face with
problems of subject´s
privacy.
In order to avoid these
problems, we, as
researchers, will
negotiate all the
necessary permissions
into the institution,
informed consents,
protect students and
teachers´ identities.
12 Relationship between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
CONCLUSIONS
The aim of this thesis is to investigate coherence between the Assessment procedures and a
specific Teaching in English language at a specific Professional Institute, which is using
one of the most contemporary models in Higher Education formation. Additionally, this
research is going to show us how intertwined Assessments and Teaching are each other
along with the positive and negative consequences for TEFL learning/ teaching to be so.
This will certainly make an important contribution to our profession performance in terms
of assessments and their contribution to improve the English teacher´s methods who are
involved in this popular teaching model.
In order to find a suitable method that successfully identifies our problem, we will resort to
our participant´s perception. For this very reason, we will use a qualitative research
methodology adopting a constructive paradigm; moreover, we will embrace the ways that
qualitative research choose its samples and determine its data collection techniques. Of
course, the analysis of data collection techniques is going to be influenced by the kind of
research that we are carrying out as well.
I really hope that the selected methodology for this research helps us to achieve their
purpose of our thesis. This is to identify the presence of coherence in assessment and
teaching of a specific institution, but if not, these techniques have to able to give us
important and valuable information to explain any incongruence. This means that the used
procedures will correctly recognize the different factors that are involved in failures or
improvements of our research problem topic.
13 Relationship between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
Also, it is supposed that this review will provide us with parameters or principles to be
considered when we, English teachers, experience something alike. Therefore, we will
know how to face each topic in our best way or at least we may be fairly aware of the
ongoing situation in a specific context.
REFERENCES
BIBLIOGRAPHYAlderson, J., Clapham, C., & Wall, D. (1995). Language Test Construction and Evaluation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Allison, D. (1999). Language Testing and Evaluation - An Introductory course. Singapore: Singapore University Press.
Bachman, L. (1990). Fundamental Considerantions in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Biggs, J. (2003). Aligning Teaching for Constructing Learning. Buckingham: Open University Press/Society for Research into Higher Education.
Boud, D., & Falchikov, N. (2007). Assessment for the long term. In D. Boud, & N. Falchikov, Rethinking assessment in Higher Education - Learning for the long term (pp. 3-13). New York: Routledge.
Briones, G. (1996). Metodología de la Investigación cuantitativa en las Ciencias Sociales. ARFO Editores e Impresores Ltda: ICFES.
Creswell, J. (2009). Research Design - Qualitative, Quantitative, Mixed Methods Approaches. California: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Cushing, S. (2002). Assessing Writing. In J. Alderson, & L. Bachman, The Cambrigde Language Assessment Series (pp. 1-230). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gibbs, G. (2007). Analysing Qualitative Data (Qualitative Research Kit). London: Sage Publications Ltd.
Gillham, B. (2007). Developing a questionnaire (Real World Research). London: British Library.
Hancock, C. (2006). Language Teaching and Language Testing: a way and ways to make appropriate connections. Acción Pedagógica, (pp. 6-13).
14 Relationship between Assessment and Teaching in Higher Education
Jackson, W., & Verberg, N. (2006). Methods: Doing Sociel Research. Canada: Pearson Education Canada.
Klave, S. (2007). Contradiction of Assessment for learning in Institution og Higher Learning. In D. Doud, & N. Falchikov, Rethinking Assessment in Higher Education - Learning for the long term (pp. 57-71). New York: Routledge.
Knight, P. (2007). Grading, classifying and future learning. In D. Boud, & N. Falchikov, Rethinking Assessment in Higher Education - Learning for the longer term (pp. 73-86). New York: Routledge.
Luoma, S. (2004). Assessing Speaking. In J. Alderson, & L. Bachman, The Cambridge Language Assessment Series (pp. 1-170). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morgan, D. (1997). Focus Groups as Qualitative Research. California: SAGE Publications.
Schön, D. (2011). Reflective Professional Practice at the University. Compás Empresarial, 14-21.
Seidman, I. (2006). Interviewing as a Qualitative Research: A guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences. New York: Teachers College Press.
Van Blerkom, M. L. (2009). Measurement and Statistics for Teachers. New York: Routledge.
Vicerrectoría Académica de AIEP Instituto Profesional de la Universidad Andrés Bello. (2011, Noviembre - Diciembre). Módulo de Autoinstrucción - Taller de Metodología y Didáctica. Retrieved Noviembre 2011, from http://virtual.aiep.cl/
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