Developing Assessment Literacy of Pre-service Science Teachers in Practice

This project aims to develop pre-service science teachers’ assessment literacy by engaging them in the development of an online open platform that fosters virtual learning, teaching and assessment of the HKDSE Chemistry curriculum. This project borrows the conceptual framework of Teacher Assessment Literacy in Practice (TALiP) from Xu and Brown (2016). The framework of TALiP consists of three levels of mastery: (1) Basic mastery of educational assessment knowledge, (2) Internalization of understanding and skills through practice, and (3) Making self-reflection on one’s own identity as an assessor. In this project, participants will be provided with a series of workshops to develop their knowledge and understanding of assessment, conceptual change, and metacognition. Second, they will be shadowed by the project team, which comprises a pool of experienced and well-trained experts in assessment development and analysis. The participants will develop high-quality MCQs with written feedback during the mentorship process. Furthermore, they will develop well-planned short teaching videos to explain the concepts related to the MCQs. The MCQs to be developed in this project will be leaner-oriented, where the leaner’s common alternative conceptions/misconceptions and their conceptual change and metacognition will be thoughtfully considered. Third, an online open platform will be developed to include all the materials and enable the participants to gather feedback from secondary school chemistry teachers and students. Finally, participants will be guided to make learning reflections concerning their development of assessment literacy. To conclude, this project develops pre-service science teachers’ assessment literacy by engaging them in contextualized practice through a mentorship scheme.

Funding Source: UGC - Teaching Development Grants (TDG)