منیره نوروزی

Accountability concerns in language education call for the development of more valid and authentic measures of assessment. In light of these concerns, performance assessment has received increasing interest in the context of teacher education programs and teacher licensing over the last decade. In Iran, a recent policy adopted by Farhangian University aims at assessing the professional competencies of its ELT graduates by requiring them to go through a performance assessment as part of the licensing requirements. Mounting concerns regarding the validity of traditional tests used for teacher certification (Mitchell, Robinson, Plake, & Knowles, 2001) have motivated Farhangian University to develop its own performance assessment. Therefore, the present study explored the components of the performance assessment through detailed analysis of the Curriculum Document of the English Major, review of literature, and investigation of the stakeholders' perspectives. To this end, in this exploratory study, convenience, purposive, and cluster sampling procedures were used for the selection of the teacher educators, student-teachers, and mentor teachers. Then, in-depth interviews were conducted with the stakeholders. Finally, based on the content analysis of the above-mentioned sources which resulted in a strong agreement, a performance assessment scheme with seventeen items was developed. However, results of the factor analysis yielded a thirteen-factor performance assessment scheme to be used as the criterion for assessing the professional competencies of student-teachers.

اصلاحات آزمون محور اغلب به عنوان ابزاری راهبردی برای القا و پیشبرد تغییراتی مطلوب صورت می گیرند. با وجود این، ادبیات مرتبط حاکی از آن است که موفقیت، اغلب آن طور که امید آن می رود حاصل نمی گردد. دلایل چنین ناکامی هایی معمولاً در مراحل پایانی برنامه تحول یافته، یعنی ارزشیابی مؤخر بر تجربه بررسی گردیده و ارزشیابی حین تجربه همچنان مورد غفلت مانده است. در کشور ما، سیاست گذاری مربوط به اصلاح کنکور سراسری موج اصلاحاتی را در نظام دیرینة سنجش و پذیرش دانشجو به بار آورد. در حوزه زبان انگلیسی، این اصلاحات بر جایگزینی تدریجی بخش زبان انگلیسی کنکور با آزمون های سراسری زبان دبیرستان تأکید دارد. به دنبال چنین تغییری، ارزیابی تبعات و پیامدهای برنامة جدید الزامی به نظر می رسد. به همین منظور، برای جمع آوری داده از جمعی از ذی نفعان و ذی ربطان این تحول از مدل ترکیبی کیفی کمی استفاده شد. ابتدا، دیدگاه استادان، مدرسان و سرگروهان (16 نفر) از طریق مصاحبه های نیمه ساختار یافته استخراج و سپس از 406 معلم زبان انگلیسی نظرسنجی به عمل آمد. روایی ابزار محقق ساخته از طریق تحلیل عاملی تأییدی-AMOS و اکتشافی-SPSS انجام و پایایی آن نیز محاسبه شد. نتایج تحلیل محتوایی مصاحبه ها و تحلیل داده های کمی حاکی از آن است که بین نظرات مدرسان و معلمان با نظرات سیاست گذاران تفاوت هایی مشاهده می شود، به ویژه، در مقولات عدالت در آزمون، اهداف آموزشی/یادگیری و طراحی، تدریس و برنامه ریزی. به طور کلی، نتایج گویای آن است که با توجه به شرایط فعلی آموزش و یادگیری زبان انگلیسی در دبیرستان های کشور و چالش های موجود، محتمل است که طرح تغییر، در شکل کنونی خود، به ابزاری نامناسب جهت پیشبرد اهداف ایدئال و بلندپروازانه تبدیل شود.

Performance assessment is exceedingly considered a key concept in teacher education programs worldwide. Accordingly, in Iran, a national assessment system was proposed by Farhangian University to assess the professional competencies of its ELT graduates. The concerns regarding the validity and authenticity of traditional measures of teachers' competencies have motivated us to devise a localized performance assessment scheme. Therefore, the present study aimed to develop a performance assessment scheme to be used as a benchmark for assessing the professional competencies of ELT graduates of this university. To this end, three assessment tasks and rating scales were developed, piloted, and administered. Next, Haertel's participatory approach was employed to set passing standards for the assessment tasks as well as the whole assessment scheme. Analysis of the data revealed inter-rater and intra-rater reliability coefficients of 0.85 and 0.89. The validity of the assessment scheme was also confirmed by experts' judgments made, to a large extent, on the correspondence between the target domain and test domain skills. Based on the results, the proposed assessment scheme is rendered more efficient and reliable in comparison to traditional tests with regard to the following dimensions: a) higher degrees of reliability and validity of the assessment scheme aimed at the improvement of licensure and program development; b) stronger evidence for inter-/intra- rater reliability and consistency of scoring; and c) an optimized and systematic procedure for setting passing standards based on the consensus of experts' judgments. It is believed that further development of the proposed assessment scheme unlocks its potential to be used as a large-scale teacher assessment model for Farhangian University.