Principals play a key leadership role in school effectiveness and student success; however, one area that has received relatively little attention so far is principals' embedded understanding of assessment and grading within the educational context where they work. We examined 141 Chinese school principals' conceptions of assessment and grading…

As one of the most high-stakes practices in education, grading has been the subject of significant debate and research over the years. However, it is only recently that researchers have started to explore the teaching and learning values embedded in grades by looking at grading policies. This study examined grading polices in China by focusing on…

This study explores beginning teacher candidates' approaches to grading in relation to their broader conceptions of assessment through a survey research design. 248 Canadian teacher candidates responded to two scales: Teachers' Approaches to Grading (TAG) and Teachers' Conceptions of Assessment (TCOA). The results of factor analysis showed that…

Given the longstanding role of grades in education, and their increased use for high-stakes decisions including student mobility, admission, selection, and accountability, this paper presents a systematic review of grading policies across all 10 Canadian provinces and 3 territories. In total, 23 policies were inductively analyzed for their…

Classroom assessment tasks and environment are central to supporting student learning, yet are under-studied at the tertiary level, especially in China's test-driven culture. This study explores the relationship between students' perceptions of assessment tasks and classroom assessment environment, within the university context of teaching English…

This study investigated Chinese secondary school English language teachers' grading decision making, focusing on the factors they considered and types of assessment they used for grading. A questionnaire was issued to 350 secondary school English language teachers in China. Descriptive analyses of the questionnaire data showed that these teachers…

University instructors' classroom assessments play a central role in and inevitably influence their teaching and their students' learning. This paper reports on a comparative interview study conducted in a range of three ESL/EFL university contexts in Canada, Hong Kong and China. Six major aspects of ESL/EFL classroom assessment practices were…

Grading, feedback, and reporting of student achievement are key elements that support learning. This article reports an interview study on a range of English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) teachers' classroom assessment practices at the tertiary level in Canada, Hong Kong, and China. The interviews focused on teachers' use of marking…

Student assessment plays a central and important role in teaching and learning. Teachers devote a large part of their preparation time to creating instruments and observation procedures, marking, recording, and synthesizing results in informal and formal reports in their daily teaching. A number of studies of the assessment practices used by…

Examined the impact of changes in public examinations on secondary school English teaching in Hong Kong, where major changes were introduced into the Certificate of Education Examination in English with the intention of creative positive washback effects on classroom teaching. Data from teacher observations and interviews showed few lived changes…

This paper presents preliminary research findings, using qualitative and quantitative methods, on the washback effect of the revised Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination in English in Hong Kong secondary schools. The research employed various methodological techniques such as questionnaires (one sent out to 42 students; and the other to…

Summarizes research findings on academic reading obtained from a questionnaire, two sets of reading tests, and a textbook analysis. Results reveal that the essential reading skills required of foreign language learners and those giving them the most difficulty in their academic studies are skimming, reading more slowly to extract relevant…

Studied how efforts to change public examination of secondary students toward a more constructive approach would influence teaching in Hong Kong schools, investigating teachers' perspectives of the change in relation to teaching situations and classroom practices. Classroom observation and interview data indicated that class activities changed,…

This article examines language learner strategy use reported by 121 Chinese learners of English through a questionnaire and the relationships between their strategy use and language performance on a national English proficiency test: College English Test-Band 4. Results showed that this group of learners reported using more metacognitive…