Assessment Literacy Disparities among Iranian EFL Teachers: Schools vs. Language Institutes

Reviewing the literature shows that the role of educational context in EFL teachers’ assessment literacy has remained largely unexplored. Therefore, the current study was done to compare the assessment literacy of Iranian EFL teachers in terms of the educational contexts, school and institute. To do the study, 127 EFL teachers (54 teachers from schools and 73 teachers from private language centers) selected through convenience sampling were considered as the participants of the study. A questionnaire developed by the researchers assessing language assessment literacy was utilized as the instrument of the study. The questionnaire evaluated the teachers’ assessment literacy based on six components. To compare the EFL school and institute teachers in terms of the six components of assessment literacy, a one-way multivariate analysis of variance (one-way MANOVA) was run. The results revealed that institute teachers enjoyed higher levels of knowledge in four components of assessment literacy: test functions, test construction, technical knowledge, and statistical knowledge compared to their school counterparts. The findings also demonstrated that the two groups were not different in terms of their understanding of assessment consequences and alternative assessment methods.