Students’ Perception of Secondary School Teachers’ Assessment with Specific Reference to the Subject of English

Abstract

Using research investigating the effect of teacher assessment practices in secondary schooling in Croatia on student perceptions of fairness, this paper1 points out participating students’ perception of fairness of assessment, focusing on teacher assessment in three secondary school subjects, but particularly in the subject of English. The research overall included enquiry into the fairness of teacher assessment practices in three secondary school subjects. The implemented research was both of a quantitative and qualitative nature. The research design was intended to be both empirical, measuring students’ perception, and quasi-ethnographic, seeking to interpret these perceptions through understanding the context. Student questionnaires, involving a total of 330 students, teacher interviews, involving a total of 12 teachers, and analysis of teachers’ assessment documents were used to collect data that were then analysed within case studies. Each case study, totalling six in number, represented a teacher with two classes of students studying one of the chosen three subjects. Classes of secondary school students from two high schools studying the subjects of Biology, Croatian or English as a foreign language formed the sample groups. These students were asked to complete a questionnaire based on Likert response type items founded on the Student Perception of Assessment Questionnaire (SPAQ) and open-ended questions based on a questionnaire developed at the Centre for Schooling and Learning Technologies (CSaLT). The SPAQ items were measured by five scales. The teachers of these students were interviewed and also provided documents that illustrate how they assessed students in these three subjects. The investigation uncovered variations in responses to teachers and subjects and differences in student response between classes of the same teacher which are possibly indicative, among other elements, of the role of teacher personality factors. This investigation revealed that from the three secondary school subjects researched, students’ perception of the secondary school subject of English achieved the most positive rating among the sample of students involved in the research.