01. PhD Thesis

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Browsing 01. PhD Thesis by Subject "classroom assessment practices"

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    A GROUNDED THEORY APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT PRACTICES OF TEACHERS IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN KAZAKHSTAN
    (Graduate School of Education, 2016-07) Tynybayeva, Madina
    Nowadays Kazakhstan is in the process of reforming secondary education. Reforms include the transition from 11-year to 12-year schooling, implementation of new curriculum, trilingual education, and new assessment system. However, the current situation in secondary schools, in terms of teachers’ classroom teaching and assessment practices, is understudied. The aim of the present research is to study teachers’ classroom assessment practices in grades six to eight of secondary schools in Kazakhstan. There are two research questions in this study: RQ1: What are teachers’ classroom assessment practices in secondary schools in Kazakhstan? RQ2: How do teachers understand the assessment practices they use in the classrooms? For the study a qualitative grounded theory design is employed. Data-driven theory formation approach is used throughout the data collection, data analysis, and discussion of the results of the analysis. Document study, lesson observation, individual interviews and focus group interviews are used as the research methods. Participants in the study were twenty-five teachers in two schools with Kazakh medium of instruction and two schools with Russian medium of instruction. Two of these schools were situated in the urban area and two in the rural. The main findings were built from empirical data analyzed using NVivo software. In total, sixty sources of data were collated and thirty-four were used for analysis: official documents, audio files with interviews, word files with transcribed interviews, protocols with lesson observations. The research resulted in the emergence of four main categories around which the theory was built. First, the answer to the research questions was sought through the prism of the professional development of the participating teachers and how professional development impacts the practices in the classroom. Second, the link between classroom assessment and teachers’ individual pedagogical style was identified. Third, the external factors that put pressure on teachers and their classroom assessment practices were revealed. Finally, in the framework of current reform of secondary education, teachers’ different reactions to the changes and reforms in the education were discussed. The study has a significant role in contributing to international empirically-based theory on assessment practices and perceptions of school teachers, and should be of particular interest to researchers interested in school education reform in post-Soviet and Central Asian contexts. It may also provide insights for those involved in proposed reforms of the education system in Kazakhstan.