Conceptions of assessment in pre-service teachers' narratives of students' failure

Published online: 13 Jul 2021Pre-service teachers' conceptions of assessment have received relatively little attention in research concerned with professional development in initial teacher education. These conceptions, alongside of others regarding teaching and learning, however, have a great impact on future teachers' instructional practices. In this study, we examine conceptions of assessment indirectly, by analysing 79 Finnish pre-service subject teachers' narratives of students' failure. Our findings reveal four major conceptions: (a) assessment is about feedback and reflection, (b) assessment needs to be personalised and demonstrate students' learning, (c) assessment should take into account students' invested effort, and (d) assessment fails to measure students' success or failure. These findings provide a qualitative insight into and extend both research on teachers' conceptions of assessment as a vital aspect of assessment literacy and research on pre-service teachers' conceptions in particular. The relevance of these findings for future teachers' professional development is discussed.This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [307672] and by Portuguese national funds through the FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) within the framework of the CIEC (Research Center for Child Studies of the University of Minho) projects under the references UIDB/00317/2020 and UIDP/00317/2020