The purpose of this essay was to investigate how teachers’ assessments in the SwedishUpper Secondary School are affected by the national tests in English language courses.By conducting a qualitative investigation in the shape of interviews with six teachers, Iaimed to show how the teachers feel that their profession is affected by the nationaltesting, whether it is positive or negative. This was done whilst also examining thenational tests within the context of school-developmental theory and assessment theory.The Swedish School Inspectorate have shown repeatedly in reports that there is a greatdiscrepancy regarding how students are assessed on a school-to-school basis which issomething that they wish to inhibit, as the Swedish school-system encouragesequivalency-based assessment. The national tests also tend to add stress both due to theadditional workload that the teachers experience, but also for the students who feelpressured to perform well under difficult testing situations.Since national testing in English is an annual assessment in Sweden teachers arecontinuously exposed to an additional workload at the end of each school year, whilststill being expected to handle their regular workload. To investigate how teachers feelabout the national tests in regards to how they perform their final assessments cantherefore be of importance, as it can provide us with an additional viewpoint as toexplain how or why national testing is or is not working in its current state.The results of the study show that although teachers find the national tests helpful sinceit provides them with additional material for assessment, the stress and additionalworkload does not outweigh the positives. There is also a tendency expressed that thenational tests tend to confirm what previous material has already shown regardingstudents. One suggestion for how the national tests can be bettered is to centralizemarking, as that would allow teachers to focus on teaching rather than worry aboutmarking. Overall, the results therefore show a negative impact on the teachers’ work.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-29632 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Jörninge, Fridha |
| Publisher | Malmö högskola, Fakulteten för lärande och samhälle (LS), Malmö högskola/Lärande och samhälle |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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