Assessment Literacy of Pre-Service Teachers and the NCBTS Domain

Assessment Literacy is a requisite skill pre-service teachers need to develop to ensure the quality of teaching and learning. Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs) are the best venue where this skill is developed. This study seeks to find out the classroom assessment literacy of pre-service teachers of Xavier University utilizing the Classroom Assessment Literacy (CALI) Tool of Dr. Craig Mertler. This tool was revalidated using the Rasch Model and items were revised in the Philippine context. Standards for each item in CALI were matched with the Strands of Domain 5 (Planning, Assessing & Reporting) of the National Competency-Based Teacher Standards (NCBTS) of the Philippines. Fifty-nine pre-service teachers participated in the study. The descriptive analysis included frequencies and percentages. Results show highest performance on choosing appropriate assessment tools with 81.36% while least in developing valid grading procedures with 8.47%. Furthermore, five out of seven assessment standards in CALI were well represented in the NCBTS. However, the standards for developing valid grading procedures and recognizing unethical practices were least addressed. The need to re-examine how assessment concepts were taught to pre-service teachers emerged. This study provided an avenue to suggest to the NCBTS Team the necessity of revisiting the strands of the NCBTS Framework. Keywords - Education, assessment literacy, NCBTS standards, Rasch Model, descriptive research design, Philippines