Teacher assessment practices in South African schools

Briefly described this study entailed classroom observations of 30 teachers from eight primary schools of varying SES, undertaking literacy and numeracy lessons. The same 30 teachers were interviewed about their assessment practices, their beliefs about assessment, current assessment policy, teaching and learning, their own classroom management; available resources, further training needs and so on. There were interviews too with parent-members of the School Governing Body (SGB), principals, Heads of Departments (HODs), assessment teams, some learners and a review of learner documents. Also, questionnaires were administered to 115 teachers (including some of those observed and interviewed) and to the HODs who were interviewed. The study was exploratory in nature. Random sampling procedures were not used. Instead, schools were chosen to represent the diversity of schools found in South Africa. Accordingly, the data is best viewed as indicative of some school-wide assessment practices and some teacher conceptions of classroom assessment. There are many findings from the study that will open up a number of policy areas likely to be significant for the further development of assessment policies within South African schools. Seven recommendations are made for additional research that may be undertaken on the basis of its findings. Assessment practices are the main focus of the report. The general conclusions from all sources of data combined, suggest a predominance of formal classrooms with mainly formal assessment practices. There is strong emphasis on teacher-delivered content with few expectations that all learners will be engaged in broader classroom activities. Despite most teachers stating in interviews their support for learner-centred classroom, these classrooms appear to be most often teacher-centred. This is most likely to be a reflection of the limited availability of resources to aid student learning.