Investigation Of Learning Assessment Conceptions Held By Senior Middle School Teachers

Learning assessment reform was put high on the agenda in the new wave of curriculum reform, whose key is to change evaluators' conception. Whether teachers' conception of learning assessment changes or not determines whether developmental learning assessment discepline can be put into assessment practice. Thus, it is of great necessity to study learning conceptions held by teachers.Both qualitative and quantitative methods can be used to study teachers' learning assessment conception. With 17 senior middle school teachers in Guangzhou and Nanhai Area of Foshan as research samples, based on phenonmenographic theories, Liang Juan(2006) adopted qualitative method to research teachers'holistic learning assessment conceptions by semi-structure interview and classroom observation, based on categorization and analysis of materials and data, she defined five distinctive learning assessment conceptions, that is: Behavior Management, Teaching Diagnoses, Target Fulfillment, Ability Cultivation and Comprehensive Development. In view of the relationships between those learning assessment conceptions, she identified two higher-level orientations, of which the former three are Management-Centered and the latter two are Development—Centered.Based on this theory, the research attempts to change Teaching Diagnoses conception into Learning Diagnoses conception and Comprehensive development conception into personality development conception. A questionnaire is used to get an overall understanding of teachers' conception on learning assessment and is aimed to substantiate students' assessment under the circumstance of new curriculum.The key of this research is to design and make learning assessment conception research questionnaire of senior middle school teachers. The following are the process and findings of this research: Working out the initial questionnaire according to difference of assessment conceptions in function, aim, content and method; Then, work out the revised version after three pre-tests with several alterations and the final questionnaire is put into effect, as proved that the questionnaire has high reliability and validity, it complies with psychological and statistical requirements; The finding reveals that on the whole teachers in the present acknowledge the development-centered assessment conception, but are widely divided as to management-centered assessment conception; T-test and Mean Analysis are used to compare middle school teachers' conception on learning assessment in aspects of gender, years of teaching, educational background, grade of teaching and school level, etc; As is shown in the results of the analysis, differences exist among teachers in those above mentioned aspects except educational background.