Teaching development grants final and financial report: Empowering BEd (EL) students with tools of curriculum alignment through adopting performance-based assessment in the teaching and learning of literary texts

Literary texts have been gradually integrated as part of the secondary English Language Curriculum in Hong Kong, with the aim of enhancing students’ exposure to the creative and imaginative appeal of language. Despite the effort of curriculum developers, the lack of alignment between curriculum orientations and assessment has caused teachers to resort to a product-oriented grammar translation pedagogy (Chow et al, 2003, 2004; Mok et al, 2006; Tong, 2011; Li, 2012; Benson & Patkin, 2014). To bridge the gaps between curriculum orientations, pedagogy and assessment, this project is designed to equip pre-service teachers in the BEd (EL) programme with the skills to develop Performance-based Assessment (PBA) tools that can elicit more creative and imaginative responses from students. Through three training workshops led by the PI and one of the Co-Is, approximately 20-26 pre-service teachers from the BEd (EL) programme (i.e.nearly all the Year 4 and 5 students from the programme who will do their FE), from three different courses will learn to incorporate features of PBA when designing assessment rubrics and giving feedback on students’ work. The PI and Co-Is will then pay three visits to each pre-service teacher, carry out focused lesson observations and provide feedback on their use of PBA during their Field Experiences (FE). Their FE lessons will be video-taped, and, together with other teaching materials, uploaded to the OCIO streaming server. A new Moodle course for this project will be opened and students in the BEd (EL) programme will carry out peer evaluations and engage in discussions on Moodle to further consolidate their understanding on the PBA approach. The lesson observation data, post-lesson interviews, and documentary analysis of the pre-service teachers’ work in the FE will serve as feedback tools and provide information about their application of PBA. The data collected will be analyzed qualitatively through coding to enhance the understanding of the effectiveness of PBA in promoting curriculum alignment among pre-service teachers in the teaching of literary texts. The results will provide suggestions for enhancing the professional competence of pre-service teachers in times of curriculum innovation. Additionally, it is hoped that the findings of the project can be extended to provide in-service secondary school teachers the insight needed to develop tools of curriculum alignment.