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Assessment policy internationally places significant importance on the use of assessment criteria across all subject areas. However, in order to ensure effective use of criteria, it is critical for teachers to develop an in-depth understanding of them. This paper reports on a study of a range of Australian Science teachers' views and uses of criteria in practical work. Six Science teachers working in secondary schools across Sydney were interviewed, their classroom activities were observed, and the data obtained were analysed using a qualitative constant comparative method. The findings indicate that despite the emphasis on Assessment for Learning (AfL) in assessment policy in Australia, teachers generally consider criteria as a marking tool, for Assessment of Learning (AoL), rather than a learning instrument. Consequently, they use criteria exclusively as a framework for assigning grades. This paper argues that teachers need to consider the use of criteria from a learning perspective in addition to its other multipurpose functions.

In recent years, there has been a growing body of research on student voice in the context of higher education, generating significant insights for pedagogical improvement. This systematic literature review aims to examine studies on student voice from 2011 to 2022, specifically those concerned with assessment and feedback in higher education. The review draws on 38 empirical studies and identifies the increasing use of mixed-methods designs in student voice research related to assessment and feedback. The analysis of these studies highlights that student voice research can improve students' experiences, change teachers' practices and inform university support concerning assessment and feedback. The review finds, however, that most studies were conducted in, or on students from, developed countries. It is necessary for researchers to engage students from different backgrounds to investigate their experiences of assessment and feedback. The results of the review also suggest that more longitudinal, mixed-methods studies should be conducted to generate further critical insights. Future research should regard students as partners in effective assessment and feedback practices, and a focus should be placed on students developing assessment and feedback literacy.

The influential role of parents has long been acknowledged as a key contributor to children's bilingual development. Parents' home-based informal efforts to foster children's bilingual abilities are described as family language policies (FLPs). The important connection between bilingualism and FLP has been established, but to date there are few studies concerning Korean immigrant families in Australia, highlighting their unique cultural values. According to traditional Korean cultural values, mothers play a central role as An-hae (the sun inside) to facilitate their children's language development (Kim, 2006). This study aimed to create a clearer picture of Korean mothers' beliefs about bilingualism and their FLPs. The participants were six Korean mothers with their children attending a community language program in Sydney. There are two data sets for this study: a six-weeks' FLP daily log of each family and a focus group interview. A thematic analysis of these data revealed the richness and specificity of FLPs for bilingual development. This paper concludes with implications for a future research agenda.

Thirty years ago Australian researchers led the development of language and content integration in schools, advocating systematic teaching of language across the curriculum to meet the needs of English as an additional language (EAL) students. However, despite significant improvements in initial teacher education, targeted professional development and language-specific curriculum and assessment, this paper suggests that secondary teachers have gained only a superficial understanding of the language knowledge necessary to teach EAL students. Drawing on questionnaires, interviews, and observations, this case study of two secondary schools in Sydney reveals the majority of teachers report their perspectives and experiences of good teaching have equipped them with a repertoire of sufficient strategies to meet EAL needs, and they see little difference between teaching EAL and learners with low levels of literacy. This paper concludes a renewed focus on integrating language and content teaching and partnership models of professional learning and evaluation are needed.

Assessing English as a second or an additional language (ESL/ EAL) learners in schools is a particularly challenging area for most teachers. With so many students requiring systematic and regular EAL support, all teachers need access to appropriate and useful assessment tools and advice, but most assessment systems are imposed on teachers, rather than negotiated with them based on a contextualised and detailed understanding of their needs. Drawing on questionnaire, focus group and teacher-based classroom observation data, this paper provides a snapshot of the views of more than 30 EAL specialist teachers drawn from with a representative range of teachers from selected government, Catholic and independent schools in Victoria and NSW. The paper concludes with a discussion of the key criteria needed for more effective EAL assessment.

The use of standards-based assessment (SBA) has gained prominence in higher education due to a wide range of research evidence that supports its effectiveness in improving learning and teaching. Although the concept is widely used in academic discourse and practice, it has multiple interpretations which have led to diverse assessment practices to the extent that some of these depart from the principles of SBA. To help build a common understanding of what constitutes SBA practices, we explored the construct of academic SBA practices using both theoretical and empirical approaches. We developed a tool, based on the principles of SBA emerging from practices noted in the literature and identified from focus groups. We used factor analysis to extract the dimensions of the construct and to establish empirical evidence for the utilisation of the tool using a data set of 410 academics who engaged in self-assessment. Results showed that a six-factor model is the most parsimonious among other models. We used these dimensions to develop a framework for describing academic SBA practices. The use of the framework and tool has critical implications for curriculum design, professional practice and development, and policy articulation.

Background: The English language school-based assessment (SBA) component of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) Examination is innovative in that the assessment tasks involve assessing English oral language skills in a high-stakes context but they are designed and implemented in the ESL classroom by school teachers in light of a regular reading and viewing program or the elective modules integrated into the school curriculum. While this certainly is a positive move towards better congruence between the teaching, learning, and assessment activities, there has been concern whether the teachers are capable of applying the assessment criteria and standards consistently in spite of going through a variety of standardization meetings and sharing discussions initiated and mandated by the Hong Kong Examination and Assessment Authority (HKEAA). In other words, there has been concern about the extent to which results provided from teachers in different schools are comparable. Also, how may task difficulty be reflected in students' assessment results across the two SBA task types? It was to provide some research evidence on matters relating to these issues associated with teacher assessment results that the study described here was carried out. Methods: The study, with the help of Rasch analysis, aims to examine the psychometric qualities of this English language school-based assessment, how students' assessment results may vary across different schools, and how task difficulty may vary across the two different task types. Results: The findings indicated the following--(1) among the three schools involved in this study, two band 2 schools demonstrated similar abilities across all task domains as there were no significant differences in students' SBA results in all assessment domains between these two band 2 schools. Significant differences were found in some assessment domains between the two band 2 schools and the band 3 school; (2) an obviously more fine-grained pattern of difference in difficulty levels of different assessment domains was observed in students' assessment results across the two task types in this study than in previous studies. Conclusions: Implications of the results for teacher assessor training and test task development are discussed.

In recent years, there has been a growing body of research on student voice in the context of higher education, generating significant insights for pedagogical improvement. This systematic literature review aims to examine studies on student voice from 2011 to 2022, specifically those concerned with assessment and feedback in higher education. The review draws on 38 empirical studies and identifies the increasing use of mixed-methods designs in student voice research related to assessment and feedback. The analysis of these studies highlights that student voice research can improve students' experiences, change teachers' practices and inform university support concerning assessment and feedback. The review finds, however, that most studies were conducted in, or on students from, developed countries. It is necessary for researchers to engage students from different backgrounds to investigate their experiences of assessment and feedback. The results of the review also suggest that more longitudinal, mixed-methods studies should be conducted to generate further critical insights. Future research should regard students as partners in effective assessment and feedback practices, and a focus should be placed on students developing assessment and feedback literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Secondary schools in Australia have long benefited from state policies aiming to increase the academic success of English language learners (ELLs). Complementary pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes have been implemented to raise the expertise of subject teachers who teach ELL students. However, subject teachers may not be receptive to learning from such programmes. This article explores the attitudes, knowledge and skills of Australian secondary teachers from schools with high numbers of ELL students. Six cases were drawn from a multiple case study investigating how teachers described their understandings about teaching ELLs, and how these understandings developed. Qualitative data were gathered using interviews and a questionnaire that prompted participants to reflect on their theories and practices relating to ELLs. These data were coded thematically, and then analysed according to Davison's (2001) conception that professional learning occurs only when dissonance disrupts a teacher's existing beliefs. Findings suggest that teachers' repertoires developed primarily through classroom experience and teachers did not readily accept professional learning outside their existing epistemology. This raises questions about how in-service and initial teacher education might generate the necessary dissonance for professional learning.

This study examines the production of topical talk in peer collaborative negotiation in an interactive assessment innovation context. The ability to stay on topic, to move from topic to topic and to introduce new topics appropriately is at the core of communicative competence. Applying conversation analysis (CA), we describe and analyze how one group of secondary ESL students orient to and construct what they take to be relevant to the assessment task as interaction proceeds. We found that in the context of group oral discussion described in our study, in the course of turn-by-turn interaction which was characterized by intensive engagement and active participation between peer participants, this group of students were able to pursue, develop, and shift topics to, on the one hand, ensure the successful completion of the assigned task, and on the other, to display individual contributions. Topical transitions appeared to be the result of participants constantly monitoring the content of talk for relevance to the assessment task agenda. Such negotiation of topical talk among the participants indicates that peer group discussion as an oral assessment format has the potential to provide opportunities for students to demonstrate "real-life" interactional abilities to relate to each other in spoken interaction.

Teacher-based assessment (TBA) is increasingly being promoted in educational policies internationally, with English language teachers being called on to plan and/or implement appropriate assessment procedures to monitor and evaluate student progress in their own classrooms. However, there has been a lack of theorization of TBA in the English language teaching field, with researchers pointing to much variability, a lack of systematic principles and procedures, and a reliance on traditional, but now outdated, psychometric assumptions. This article provides an overview of some of the current issues in TBA, including its definition and key characteristics, and the complex but significant questions which its implementation pose for our understandings of language, learning, and assessment. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure and 6 footnotes.)

The Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) has recently moved from norm-referenced to standards-referenced assessment, including the incorporation of a substantial school-based summative oral assessment component into the compulsory English language subject in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE). Starting in Form 4, teachers now assess their own students' oral English language competencies through a range of classroom-embedded activities over 2 years (SBA Consultancy Team, 2005). This high-profile assessment initiative marks a significant shift in policy as well as in practice for the HKEAA. Although school-based assessment (SBA) is in line with the Education and Manpower Bureau's general move to align assessment with curriculum reforms, in the early stage of implementation the reforms raised a number of concerns in the wider school community, including sociocultural, technical, and practical concerns. This article first describes the specific content and structure of the HKCEE English Language SBA component. It then reports on the result of the initial analysis of teachers' and students' responses to the initiative in the first stage of its implementation, including the perceived benefits for learning and teaching. The article concludes with a brief overview of how this initial analysis led to the development of a number of subsequent research studies aimed at monitoring and developing teacher knowledge and skills and evaluating more systematically the impact of the reform on teachers, students, and schools in Hong Kong. (Contains 9 footnotes and 5 tables.)

Partnership and the integration of language and content teaching in English-medium schools have long been active areas of research and inquiry in applied linguistics and TESOL. However, most researchers have tended to focus on methods and techniques to use in the classroom or on the analysis of the linguistic demands of the content areas. Much less attention has been paid to researching the process of co-planning and co-teaching and to supporting the evolution of the partnership between ESL and content teachers. This paper draws on questionnaire and interview data collected as part of a school-based professional development initiative in an English-medium school in Asia that focused on developing more collaborative relationships between ESL and content/classroom teachers in a large culturally and linguistically diverse elementary school. The paper begins with an analysis of some of the underlying assumptions in current conceptualisations of effective collaboration between ESL and mainstream/content-area teachers, then presents an emerging framework that draws on teacher talk and critical discourse analysis to describe and evaluate the stages of collaboration and the different levels of its effectiveness. The implications of this research for evaluating approaches to partnership and for setting realistic goals for professional development and institutional change will also be explored.

Subject English is a central feature of state-mandated curriculum in English-speaking contexts and a high-stakes barrier to be negotiated for successful graduation from secondary school, irrespective of language and cultural background. In an increasingly globalized world, subject English is also being reconstituted in new and unfamiliar contexts, as part of the drive to export education services. However, the construction of subject English in the curriculum is rarely subjected to the same scrutiny of applied linguists as mathematics, science or history, partly because of the widespread perception that subject English is language rather than "content," and partly because of the continually contested and changing nature of subject English as a discipline. This paper draws on a larger comparative study of senior secondary school subject English in Hong Kong and Australia. It draws on Bernstein's notions of visible and invisible pedagogies and work on insider/outsider perspectives to explore the perceptions and impact of subject English on students from language backgrounds other than English.

Across the globe, pre-service teachers' (PSTs) assessment for learning literacy remains relatively low despite the critical role it plays in increasing student outcomes. Research highlight that this is due to insufficient initial teacher preparation with most teacher education curricula are using a less effective approach. To address this gap, this study explores the utilisation of a needs-based professional development (PD) program to build PSTs' assessment for learning (AfL) literacy. Using design-based research methodology, a needs-based AfL literacy program was developed at one of the teacher training institutes in Myanmar. A total of 335 PSTs involving 30 PSTs in the intervention group and 305 PSTs in the cohort group were asked to self-assess their AfL literacy before and after the program by using survey instrument. Findings revealed that there was an effect of the PD program on PSTs' AfL literacy that PSTs increased their AfL literacy after the PD program. Implications of the results for the development and implementation of the needs-based PD program are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing concern in teacher-based assessment, particularly in assessing English language development in high-stakes contexts, is our inadequate understanding of the means by which teachers make assessment decisions. This article adopts a sociocultural approach to report on the background and findings of a comparative study of ESL teachers' assessment of written argument in the final years of secondary school in Australia and Hong Kong. Using verbal protocols, individual and group interviews and self-reports, the study explored the different assessment beliefs, attitudes and practices of teachers working with senior secondary Cantonese-speaking students acquiring English as a second language. The study found that the Australian teachers varied considerably in their approach to assessing student work with two somewhat conflicting assessment orientations revealed: the legalistic assessors who 'ticked the boxes' according to the published assessment guidelines and those assessors who relied much more on professional judgment. In Hong Kong, there was much more variability in the underlying assessment criteria with consensus reached through reference to community norms rather than explicit statements of performance. The article concludes that traditional notions of validity may need to be reconceptualized in high-stakes teacher-based assessment, with professional judgment, interaction and trust given much higher priority in the assessment process.