Student teachers’ appraisal of the importance of assessment in teacher education and self-reports on the development of assessment competence

Abstract

Competence in assessment has been identified as a key feature in teachers’ professional success. However, assessment competence is a complex field, comprising capacity in both summative and formative assessment. Hence, a detailed view on how student teachers perceive assessment is the focus of this study. Based on an official catalogue of assessment standards, over 900 student teachers repeatedly rated the importance of the standards and the frequency with which they behaved in accordance with the standards in practicum situations. Analyses revealed that (a) students perceived assessment competence as a contextual entity distinguishable from other domains, (b) while they assigned high importance ratings to assessment standards in general, standards concerned specifically with external evaluation were seen as relatively unimportant, and (c) they perceived a rise in their own assessment competence during their teacher education. Taken together, this suggests that in the student view assessment competence is important and develops over time.