Public junior high school mathematics teachers’ conceptions of the purpose and practice of assessment in Bongo district of Ghana

Abstract

The study investigated public school junior high mathematics teachers’ conceptions of assessment and their practices of it. It intended to find the extent to which the teachers’ conceptions of the assessment practices reflect assessment for learning, assessment as learning and assessment of learning. It also put to bear the assessment tools that the teachers use in assessing mathematics learning outcomes. The study employed the concurrent triangulation mixed research design within the pragmatist world view. Using a multistage sampling procedure, a sample size of 58 public junior high school mathematics teachers was used to collect questionnaire data. Out of this, 6 teachers were purposively selected for interview and 7 teachers were also purposively selected for observation data. The questionnaire data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Service Solution version 25 (IBM version 25). Descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages were used for the item-by-item analysis of the questionnaire. The observation was also manually calculated using frequencies and percentages. Again, thematic analysis was used to analyze interview data. Findings from the study emerged that the mathematics teachers conceptions of assessment practices highly reflect assessment of learning (83.9%) and assessment for learning (81.7%). The qualitative results failed to confirm the teachers conception of assessment as learning. The study also revealed that the mathematics teachers used more traditional assessment tools than alternative assessment tools through the exploration whereas the quantitative results provided contrary results. The study again discovered that the mathematics teachers use class tests, written exercises, homework, examinations, oral questioning, project work and observations as mathematics assessment tools for assessing learning outcomes in their classrooms. It was uncovered that teachers centre their assessment processes on gathering of data and offering feedback. It is therefore recommended that the heads of the junior high schools and the Bongo Directorate of Education should organise in-service training for mathematics teachers on assessment as learning and the stages of mathematics assessment process.