Promoting student teachers’ accountability and objectivity in self assessments through formal training

Abstract

Literature shows that self assessments have become a trend in higher education in some parts of the world. For student teachers who are expected to be effective assessors, a range of assessment skills is indispensable. These skills are particularly important in today’s teaching and learning contexts where teachers teach and assess students from diverse backgrounds. With student diversity lies the danger that some teachers with biases may assess in a subjective manner that potentially obcures the performance results of some groups. Universities and potential employers use students’ performance results as a yardstick to measure the quality of prospective students and employees. Therefore, in assessing students’ work, accountability, reliability and objectivity should be emphasized, as it is through them that reliable results can be achieved. In South Africa there is not much literature on self assessments among student teachers. This qualitative case study reports on the experiences of student teachers of administering individual and group self assessments, and the transformation in their behaviors and practices after taking the Assessment 101 Module. Data were collected through focus-group interviews. In this paper, the researcher argues that if student teachers can assess their own work objectively and with accountability in mind, they can transfer those skills meaningfully to their teaching professions. Before providing formal training on assessments, the researcher had observed that student teachers inflated and produced skewed scores in both individual and group self assessments. After training, students reported to have undergone some transformation, and to have learned some important values of accountability, honesty, objectivity, ethics and trustworthiness in self assessments. Nonetheless, they highlighted some diversity-related challenges that they perceived as a threat to accountability and objectivity especially in group self assessments. The researcher recommends that in order to produce effective, accountable, reliable and objective assessors, facilitation in self assessments should be prioritized in teacher education programs. Furthermore, the duration of the Assessment 101 Module should be extended to allow students maximal opportunities to practise assessment skills. For future research, she recommends that quantitative research on self assessments should be conducted to provide better insights of the gap(s) in students’ self-assessment knowledge and skills. In addition, the impact of factors of race, gender, class, culture and religion on self assessments should be investigate