Assessment Practices of High School Teachers in Malaysia

In recent months, the Ministry of Education, Malaysia has floated the idea of reducing the role of standardized tests and replacing it with school based assessment in which the role of testing is shifted to the school. The reason given for this is that there is an over reliance on tests by teachers and students. The shift to school based assessment has inadvertently raised several issues. Are the teachers equipped with testing knowledge and skills to construct tests? How good are the tests they construct in the school? According to Hedge (2000) , the process of constructing a test requires well defined practices. She defines testing practices as the process of designing, constructing and setting up tests and a host of other activities revolving around testing. This paper discusses the testing practices of a group of experienced teachers in schools in Malaysia. It intends to investigate the procedures and processes used by these teachers in constructing their tests. The study also aims to investigate the extent of assessment knowledge and skills that these teachers have in undertaking the tasks of test construction. This study also attempts to qualitatively investigate the perceived qualities of the tests constructed as compared to the best test development models. A total of ten English language teachers were involved in the study. The results from the investigation show that experienced teachers do not have adequate knowledge and skills in language testing and evaluation to be able to construct proper tests. The tests they construct generally do not reflect the basic principles and procedures of good tests development models such as McNamara (2008), Hughes (2003) and Bachman and Palmer (1996).