Teachers’ Assessment Literacy Enhancement Erasmus Project

Project Title

Teachers’ Assessment Literacy Enhancement

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

There is evidence that Language Testing and Assessment (LTA) can have a strong impact on the quality of the learning outcomes. Yet, English Language Teachers (ELTs) cannot deliver professional results if they are not sufficiently trained in the area of LTA. Unfortunately, research has shown that in many educational systems across Europe, ELTs are, for the most part, unable to create good quality assessment materials and procedures. They have not developed, that is, what has been termed as ‘assessment literacy’, which is partly due to the lack of sufficient training in LTA. Given this state of affairs, there is an urgent need to develop an efficient, relevant, scalable and sustainable LTA training infrastructure for ELTs, which can eventually be of benefit to other language teachers as well.

Consisting of a network of experts from six European countries (Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Norway and the UK), the Teachers’ Assessment Literacy Enhancement (TALE) project is built on a solid identification of LTA training needs of pre- and in-service English Language Teachers in order to provide a training ecosystem that caters for these needs.

Overall, the TALE project has contributed towards:

– the development of innovative training materials and services, which can be delivered through face-to-face and online learning and offered through synchronous and asynchronous modes for the enhancement of the required LTA skills and competencies. The TALE training ecosystem, which has been piloted during the lifetime of the project, offers continuous support and mentoring to ELTs in the respective countries and beyond.
– the expansion and the exchange of LTA expertise between European educational contexts in a creative and innovative way.
– the cooperation between and within different disciplines, e.g. education (foreign/second language teaching and testing, assessment literacy, Content and Language Integrated Learning assessment and eLearning/distance education) and various sectors of training and the workplace in order to foster efficient and meaningful assessments suitable for all types of language learners in primary and secondary education.
– the synchronization and harmonization of foreign language teacher training and assessment practices in the field of LTA in Europe and beyond.

The training endeavour has followed three main phases. The first phase involved a Needs Analysis (Intellectual Output 1) which was achieved through a comprehensive literature review on current thinking in language assessment literacy and an extensive consultation with pre- and in-service teachers (n=852) and language learners of all ages (n=1788) to ensure that the training ecosystem would meet their needs. The results of this phase were used as input in the next phase. The second phase involved the development and piloting of an Online Training Course (Intellectual Output 2) consisting of eight independent sections (sub-courses). During piloting, feedback mechanisms were put in place to ensure that the stakeholders were able to evaluate the effectiveness of the training materials and services. The feedback which pilot teachers (more than 150 from various countries) provided was given due consideration and revisions were made accordingly. Once the materials were refined and the evaluation process was complete, the “Handbook of Assessment for Language Teachers” (Intellectual Output 3) was drafted, refined, piloted and finally published to enable and promote wider implementation of the project beyond the partner organisations. The Handbook contains a user-friendly book version of the training tasks, explanations and answer keys that users can find on the TALE Online Course. The third key phase of the project, which ran concurrently with the other two, involved: a) project management, b) evaluation and quality assurance and c) dissemination, exploitation and sustainability.

The main target audiences of the project were: 1) pre-service and in-service English Language Teachers, 2) students, 3) educational policymakers, 4) experts and researchers in LTA and 5) pre-service and in-service teachers of other languages. In each of the participating countries, two multiplier events took place aiming to disseminate the results of the Needs Analysis and the Online Training Course, respectively. In these events mainly pre-service and in-service ELTs participated and also persons from the last three categories of stakeholders mentioned above. Near the completion of the project, a final conference was organised in order to raise awareness on the main intellectual outputs of the project: the Needs Analysis, the Online Course and the Handbook. Taking into account the innovative nature of TALE, the impact on all groups involved in the project has been more than significant, highlighting the importance of the TALE training ecosystem in helping teachers enhance their language assessment literacy and, thereby, achieve better learning outcomes.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 268884,13 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS & Country: CY

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITY OF BEDFORDSHIRE
• DEBRECENI EGYETEM
• HELLENIC OPEN UNIVERSITY
• PADAGOGISCHE HOCHSCHULE HEIDELBERG
• OSLOMET – STORBYUNIVERSITETET