Designing an Assessment Course for In-Service English Language Teachers in Colombia

Research on language assessment literacy (LAL) has focused on describing this construct for different stakeholders involved in language assessment, while paying secondary attention to pedagogical initiatives aimed at fostering LAL among teachers. This research article reports on a diagnostic study which sought to describe the LAL of forty Colombian English language teachers; the purpose of this diagnostic was to use the teachers’ feedback to design an online language assessment course. Through a mixed-methods research design, a questionnaire and a content analysis scheme were used for data collection and analysis. The convergent findings indicated issues in the design of assessment instruments and a related need to develop the teachers’ design dimension of their LAL. Implications for the design of the course are presented, based on the data generated in the study.