Self-efficacy for classroom assessment, which targets teachers’ beliefs about their ability to deliver such high-quality assessments, predicts teachers’ assessment repertoire and use of policy documents. The link between self-efficacy for classroom assessment and use of policy documents is particularly interesting in low-accountability systems, where teachers interpret and enact policies at their own discretion. This research was carried out in Norway, which has been described as a high-trust, low-accountability policy environment characterized by a lack of regulations governing teacher grading practices. We used two self-efficacy for classroom assessment scales to explore the relationship between the use of regulatory policy documents and self-efficacy in Norwegian teachers. We asked teachers how much they used five policy documents that nominally form the basis for assessment practices in schools, and to rate their self-efficacy for classroom assessment work. The participants were 264 teachers representing lower secondary school and upper secondary school education. Generally, self-efficacy for classroom assessment explained between approximately 5% and 14% of variance in models where “use of policy documents” was a dependent variable. The effect sizes were thus somewhat varied, but in all instances, higher self-efficacy was associated with higher use of policy documents. The findings thus corroborate previous findings that higher self-efficacy was positively associated with greater engagement with policy documents, thereby highlighting the role of teacher self-efficacy in shaping assessment practices.
Skar et al. (Fri,) studied this question.