Investigating the use of the self-assesment processes by Libyan EFL secondary school teachers in assessing students' written work

• Main Author: Dalala, Jamal
• Published: University of Sunderland 2014
• Subjects: 378.1
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.657611

Assessment is of paramount importance in enhancing learning through diagnosing learners' needs, describing their accomplishments and checking their learning progress. Self-assessment is a powerful strategy for involving learners in their own learning and increasing their language awareness in everyday educational practice. Conducting self-assessment after writing is a powerful way to develop one's own learning. Adopting and using self-assessment is an ultimate goal in Libyan classrooms. Despite research in self-assessment over many years, there has been no research, which has focused on how this has been implemented in practice in Libyan secondary schools. Changes in Libyan education practices in 1999 - 2000 moved from traditional teacher-led classrooms to a more communicative context which requires learner and learning-centred approaches made it mandatory for self-assessment to become integral and integrated into the English language classroom. However, despite this, there has been little staff development to guide secondary teachers through the changes which were largely dependent on individual interpretations of the new manuals. The study, therefore, explores how self-assessment of EFL writing is understood and used in Libyan secondary schools. This research explores these interpretations and changes to practice through 60 semi-structured questionnaires, 10 semi-structured interviews and 5 semi-structured classroom observations conducted with a sample of EFL Libyan teachers from 12 different secondary schools. For this study, the three methods of data collection have been combined. Thematic analysis was selected as a means for qualitative data analysis while a Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) programme was adopted for analysing the quantitative data. Evaluation of the data produced some very interesting results. Both the quantitative and the qualitative results show that the participants used selfassessment strategies that are required to develop student learning abilities such as establishing criteria, comparing work to the criteria and/or standards and providing feedback. As concerns, the timing of the grades relative to feedback, the majority of both, the quantitative and the qualitative data showed that tutors preferred to provide feedback before giving summative grades. Interestingly, to give feedback after distributing summative grades, which is the standard self-assessment model was less frequent and less popular for all types of data collected. Moreover, conducting self-assessment integrated with peer or teacher feedback was also considered in this stud. The results also show individual and often idiosyncratic interpretations of the practices and processes which support self-assessment. The findings showed that the teachers hold passionate beliefs towards the self-assessment processes. However, most of the teachers did not translate their beliefs into practice. Hence, a noticeable contribution to knowledge was made by the success of this research and adds to the body of previous knowledge. This research is of particular importance because the literature argues and concurs that self-assessment is a critical element which supports learning and teaching and the dialogic, interactive classroom, all of which are components of the communicative language classroom which is the context of the study. Finally, the findings of this study are very helpful for teachers and researchers in Libya and other international EFL contexts and may also provide great insights into the Libyan context and into other similar contexts.