Fairness of Classroom Assessment Approach: Perceptions from EFL Students and Teachers

• Published in: English teaching & learning Vol. 47; no. 4; pp. 529 - 548
• Main Authors: Wallace, Matthew P., Ng, Jupiter Si Weng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Singapore Springer Nature Singapore 01.12.2023
• Subjects: Education; Language Teaching; Original Paper; Teaching and Teacher Education; 評量方式; Assessment fairness; Assessment approaches; Classroom-based assessment; EFL; 公平性; 課堂評量
• ISSN: 1023-7267; 2522-8560
• DOI: 10.1007/s42321-022-00127-4

This study reports on the fairness perceptions of three approaches to classroom assessment: (1) criterion-referenced assessment (performance is compared against a set of pre-determined criteria), (2) norm-referenced assessment (performance is compared against the performance of others), and (3) individual-referenced assessment (performance is compared with an earlier performance from the student). The literature advocates for the use of criterion-referenced assessment in the classroom because it can best determine how well learners are able to meet intended learning outcomes. Despite this, norm-referenced assessment remains a popular method in many Asian EFL classroom contexts. Beyond these theoretical recommendations and classroom practices, it is unclear how fairly EFL learners and teachers perceive the assessment approaches to be. Understanding this is important because when students view their assessment to be unfair, they tend to display negative behaviors in class. To address this need, survey data was collected from 276 students and 14 teachers from a Chinese-medium instruction secondary school in Macau. The questionnaire elicited fairness perceptions of the three assessment approaches. Performance and scoring scenarios were presented to participants who indicated how fairly each scoring method was using a six-point Likert scale. Results showed that both students and teachers viewed criterion-referenced assessment to be the fairest approach, individual-referenced to be fair, and norm-referenced to be unfair. These results support the use of criterion-referenced and individual-referenced assessment as a classroom-based evaluation method instead of norm-referenced assessment because they are perceived to be fair in the current study.