Understanding university English instructors’ assessment literacy: a formative assessment perspective

Formative assessment is a powerful approach to inform, direct, and enhance teaching and learning. To deploy it in classrooms, teachers are expected to be assessment-capable. However, few studies have explored the extent to which teachers are literate in formative assessment applications and their levels of literacy, especially in Chinese tertiary settings. This study examined Chinese university English instructors’ assessment literacy by investigating what three participants knew, thought about, and how they applied formative assessment. A knowledge-conception-practice framework was applied to explore assessment literacy in the four formative assessment processes (i.e., design, use, interpretation, and communication) to engage student learning. Individual interviews, classroom observations, and supplementary documents were adopted as instruments for data collection. Through iterative and comparative thematic analysis, findings revealed that notwithstanding variations, all three instructors possessed basic formative assessment knowledge and were willing to design and conduct formative assessment-related activities for students’ learning engagement and enhancement. However, they held product-oriented rather than process-oriented mindsets when designing, using, interpreting, and communicating formative assessment. They also lacked sufficient assessment knowledge and strategies to effectively engage students in self-regulated learning through learner-centered task design, success criteria, and process-oriented feedback. Lastly, the study discussed theoretical and pedagogical implications regarding how to conceptualize and develop English instructors’ formative assessment literacy in mainland China and beyond.