Teacher assessment literacy beyond technicalities and intuition

Abstract

This article is about assessment literacy among teachers. It deals with five science teachers' different ways of thinking about knowledge, learning and knowledge assessment. Their approaches are contradictory and referring to different levels of reflection: to a practical, a didactic and a theoretical level. A teacher can in words express one approach but act on another. Such incoherence may for instance prevent teachers from regarding knowledge assessment as a key issue in their instructional activity and thus not something worth reflecting on. The teachers take position according to different educational contexts when considering the multiple purposes of assessment. They construct and reconstruct ideologically and epistemologically different but corresponding identities.