Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 472e482

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Teaching and Teacher Education

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Primary and secondary teachers conceptions of assessment: A qualitative study

Ana Remesal*
Departamento de Psicologa Evolutiva y de la Educacin, Facultad de Psicologa, Universidad de Barcelona, Paseo del Valle Hebrn, 171, 08035 Barcelona, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A particular framework of teachers conceptions about assessment in school is presented. Fifty teachers
Received 7 March 2010 of primary and secondary school were interviewed. Results of a qualitative analysis allowed building
Received in revised form a model of conceptions of assessment. This model comprises four dimensions about the effects of
23 September 2010
assessment on: teaching, learning, accountability of teachers and schools to different audiences and
Accepted 27 September 2010
stakeholders, and the certication of achievement. These conceptions, unequally distributed, show some
tendencies that might be linked to the intrinsic tension between the by-default co-occurrence of both
Keywords:
pedagogic and societal functions of assessment in school, and to difculties of implementing assessment
Compulsory education
Assessment function
for learning practices.
Learning assessment 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Teacher belief
Conception

1. Introduction
Classroom assessment requires a great deal of time and effort;
teachers may spend as much as 40% of their time directly
involved in assessment-related activities. Yet teachers are
neither trained nor prepared to face this demanding task
(Stiggins, 1988, p. 363).
Despite having been published over 20 years ago, this quote is
still relevant today. In the last two decades, educational research
has brought to light the difculty of implementing new forms of
assessment, and especially those aimed at assessment for learning
(Black & Wiliam, 2009; Brown, Lake, & Matters, 2009; Stiggins,
2005a). An important amount of recent research in the eld
revolves around teachers assessment practices, and even more
specically, around grading practices, rather than on the beliefs
that may ground these practices (see for instance, Duncan &
Noonan, 2007; Duncan et al., 2009; Harlen, 2005; Leighton,
Gokiert, Cor, & Hefferman, 2010; Liu, 2008a, 2008b; McMillan,
2001; McMillan, Myran, & Workman, 2002; McMillan and Nash,
2000; Simon, Tierney, & Forgette-Giroux, 2008; Vandeyar, &
Killen, 2003; Xu, & Liu, 2009). Yet most of these studies conclude
drawing attention on teachers beliefs or conceptions. Results point
to teachers conceptions as one of the key factors that inuence
classroom decisions (Aguirre & Speer, 2000; Remesal, 2006;
* Tel.: 34 933125109; fax: 34 934021368.
E-mail address: aremesal@ub.edu.
Grifths, Gore, & Ladwig, 2006; Sato & Kleinsasser, 2004). This is
especially critical during periods of systemic school reform, since
teachers are the last step in a sequence of changes.
The focus of current research on assessment (grading) practices
must be regarded from an historical perspective (McMillan, 2003;
Stiggins, 1991). As a matter of fact, in countries where high-
stakes, external, standardized assessment has been privileged over
classroom assessment, school practices have developed in different
ways compared with countries where this high-stakes evaluation
was scarce during the 20th century (Remesal, 2007). In that respect,
Barnes, Clarke, and Stephens (2000), for instance, report about
changes in school assessment practices at high school that took
place in an Australian State, propelled by changes in the external
evaluation system; however, in another neighbor State, where
these external changes did not take place, school assessment
practices remained unchanged. Black and Wiliam (2009) alert
about the impossibility of implementing reform measures con-
cerning assessment that would be worldwide equally effective, due
to the highly contextual and cultural embeddedness of school
practices. But precisely therefore, there is the need to explore each
of these specic contexts in order to be able to promote substantive
change.
The present study was carried out in Spain under particular
historical circumstances. A new General Educational Act was put in
force progressively during the 1990s decade. This reform move-
ment completely restructured the school system, affecting assess-
ment, particularly accreditation forms and criteria. However, in
contrast with other countries, as was the case in the US, the UK or
Canada, the new system did not involve the use of standardized

0742-051X/$ e see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.09.017
 A. Remesal / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 472e482
tests for external evaluation, which remain more or less anecdotal
as an irregular school policy measure. The focus of the reform was
formative school-based assessment. In this paper, results of
a research on primary and compulsory mathematics secondary
teachers conceptions of assessment functions in basic education
are presented. The study is carried out in this particular context of
systemic school reform; it attempts to contribute to teacher
education for assessment.
2. Theoretical background
The study presented in this paper backs its arguments in
different elds and subject matters: classroom assessment prac-
tices, teachers conceptions of assessment, teachers education for
assessment, and nally a clarication of the concepts beliefs/
conceptions, which eventually grounds the purpose of the study.
The following subsections address each of these topics one by one.
2.1. Classroom assessment practices
The strong inuence of assessment on instructional processes
has been widely documented since the late 1980s and 1990s (see,
for example, Black & Wiliam, 1998, 2009; Clarke, 1996; Nunziati,
1990, Stiggins, 1988; Volante, 2007). In this study, classroom
assessment is understood as a complex process of collection,
analysis and evaluation of evidences about the teaching and
learning process and learning outcomes. This process is completed
with decisions that affect the teaching and learning processes, both
interwoven. Thus, assessment fulls at least two basic functions in
school (Guskey, 2003; Pilcher, 2001; Stiggins, 2005a, 2005b;
Stiggins, Faires-Conklin, & Bridgeford, 2005). On the one hand, it
is a device capable of promoting reection and change in education
by monitoring both, teaching and learning. On the other hand,
assessment is a tool for certication to different audiences in
society, such as families or school administrations. That is, it serves
for accountability of students achievement and teachers profes-
sional labor. The former is called by some authors the pedagogical
function of assessment (Coll, Barber, & Onrubia, 2000; Coll &
Martn, 1996), while the latter is labeled the societal function.
These denominations are assumed in this study (Coll & Remesal,
2009).
Classroom assessment practices have been studied in the past
decade in different parts of the world. Duncan and Noonan (2007),
for instance, state that factors such as class-size and school-size
have not a signicant impact on teachers classroom assessment
practices, as one might hypothesize, based on a study of secondary
teachers in Canada. In contrast, they found that the subject area
does have an impact on classroom assessment practices. More
concretely, Mathematics teachers seem to rely more on objective
multiple choice tests and recall activities than teachers from other
subjects, such as English or Arts. A later study conrms these same
results and adds the factor of school organization -a centralized
policy versus teacher-based decisions (Duncan et al., 2009). These
results stand in line with previous studies in the USA (McMillan
2001; McMillan & Nash, 2000; McMillan, Myran, & Workman,
2002) that determine various elements that teachers take into
account for grading decisions. According to these authors, teachers
take decisions on grading based on informal observation of
students effort, good behavior, extra-credit work, etc., which is
distinctly different from performance measurement with reliable
instruments. They identied also certain differences between
primary and secondary school practices. In the primary school
level, teachers would rely on this mixture of informal criteria even
stronger than at the secondary level. Nevertheless, other authors
have reported about invariance with respect to school level, but
473
comparing middle school and high school (Liu, 2008a), and also
cultural invariance, with respect to Chinese and US teachers
grading practices (Liu, 2008b). In other words, one could state that
the actual state of research about assessment practices is either
inconclusive, or as Black and Wiliam (2009) defend, deeply
culturally rooted.
2.2. Teachers conceptions of assessment
The relationship between beliefs, or conceptions, and school
practices is well known since long ago, as a matter of fact.
Conceptions are tightly linked to practice (Pajares, 1992); they
generate in the daily experience and return to it taking the form of
decisions and behaviors. Grifths, Gore, and Ladwig (2006) repor-
ted that beliefs affect teaching practices to a greater degree than
teaching experience and socioeconomic school context do. Yet,
beliefs are not always necessarily coherent nor explicit (Calderhead,
1996, Clark & Peterson, 1986). In addition, they are often chal-
lenged, at times propelled, at times hindered, by legal and
contextual requirements (Harris & Brown, 2009).
Wolf, Bixby, Glenn, and Gardner (1991) made one of the early
contributions on conceptions of assessment. These authors
proposed to distinguish between two opposite poles in
a continuum: the assessment culture and the testing culture.
According to these authors, the ideas that teachers hold about
intelligence, about the process of teaching and learning, the nature
of assessment tasks, and about evaluation criteria, eventually shape
their understanding and practices of assessment. Delanshere and
Jones (1999), also propose three dimensions to identify and
describe teachers beliefs on assessment. These dimensions are (a)
purposes and functions of assessment, specied as the distribution
of students according to achievement levels and external evalua-
tion; (b) teachers perception of curriculum and their professional
self-efcacy feeling; and (c) their beliefs about the teaching and
learning process and about students as learners.
More recently, Brown and colleagues have developed
a comprehensive research program since the early 2000s. Browns
model refers to four key trends in New Zealand teachers concep-
tions of assessment (Brown, 2002): assessment conceived as a tool
for improvement of teaching and learning; assessment as driven by
school accountability purposes; assessment driven by student
accountability purposes; and nally assessment as a meaningless
practice with little or no relevance in daily school life. This model
has been subsequently conrmed in several studies (e.g., Brown,
2007; Brown, Lake, & Matters, 2009). Nevertheless, the model
could not be conrmed in another set of recent studies with
Spanish teacher students (Remesal, 2008, 2009). These last con-
trasting results demonstrate the complex nature of teachers and
teacher-students conceptions of assessment, and clearly highlight
the necessity of further research.
In other countries, related studies have been carried out, as well.
Some narrow the topic of research to specic curriculum areas.
There is, for instance, Changs study (2006). This author reports
about Taiwan teachers beliefs in the particular eld of oral
language assessment, in an educational context of English as
a foreign language (EFL). This author concludes that those
teachers beliefs about learning and about their students as learners
affected their assessment practices as far as reducing the chance for
high level assessment activities, in a pursuit of students satisfac-
tory grades. Pope, Green, Johnson, and Mitchell (2009) go further,
addressing the ethical implications of dilemmatic assessment
decisions for teachers in their classrooms, in their attempt to keep
the balance between their grading duties and the will of improving
students learning. Ogan-Bekiroglu (2009) focuses on science
teachers attitudes towards assessment and factors impacting these
474 A. Remesal / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 472e482
attitudes. This author concludes that subject-matter knowledge,
among other aspects, inuence pre-service teachers condence in
their expectations of implementing constructivist assessment
procedures. In Taiwan, Wang, Kao, and Lin (2009) arrive at similar
results. They nd a connection between participants views of the
subject matter e science e and the intended assessment practices
and purposes. Other previous studies focused on mathematics
teachers conceptions of assessment, paying attention to particular
curricular aspects of mathematics, such as practices and forms of
assessment (Philippou & Christou, 1997; Rico & Gil, 1997; Rochera,
Remesal, & Barber, 2002).
2.3. Teacher education for assessment
Despite the evidence of research highlighting the importance of
teachers beliefs in classroom practices, the proposals rising to
develop teachers competence for assessment do not consider these
research results. Some call it assessment capacity (McMunn,
McColskey, & Butler, 2004; Towndrow, Tan, Yung, & Cohen, 2010),
some others assessment competence (Edelenbos, & Kubanek-
German, 2004); some prefer assessment literacy (Leighton,
Gokiert, Cor, & Hefferman, 2010; Lukin, Bandalos, Eckhout, &
Mickelson, 2005; Oleary, 2008; Volante, & Fazio, 2007; Wang,
Wang, & Huang, 2008), while some others talk about assessment
knowledge (Xu & Liu, 2009). However, none of these proposals
regard teachers beliefs about assessment as an indispensable point
of departure for any further professional development on the
matter. The inconsideration of teachers beliefs and conceptions
goes back to Stiggins (1999) and McMillan (2000) early proposals
for teacher education in matters of classroom assessment. Although
enclosing decisive elements such as knowledge about assessment
procedures, aligning assessment methods and teaching goals;
interpretation and communication of results, their proposals, too,
fail to address teachers (either pre-service or in-service) beliefs
and conceptions. Yet the fact is that, as long as teachers beliefs are
left aside, some supercial changes might take place, but the like-
lihood of profound long-lasting changes in classroom practices is
rather small. In addition, research has presented evidence that
taking teachers conceptions into account is even of a greater
importance in times of educational reform (Vandeyar & Killen,
2003). Only Graham (2005) recently presents an experience of
teaching education for assessment in which teacher candidates
beliefs start to be taken into account. However, even in Grahams
experience, beliefs are considered only in an informal way, letting
teacher-students implicitly reect about prior beliefs and changes
in those, without any actual and systematic externalization and
reection on their beliefs and conceptions.
2.4. Beliefs and conceptions in this study
The constructs belief and conception are not always neatly used
(Pajares, 1992), therefore, there is the need for clarication. In this
study, the terms belief and conception are clearly differentiated. The
term belief is used to refer to those basic statements about different
aspects of reality that any person might take for true at different
times of his/her life, although they do not have to constitute an
objective truth at all (Goodenough, 1990). In other words, although
resistant to change, beliefs are not immutable throughout life; on
the contrary, they are subject to inuences from the social context
of which the individual participates. At the same time, beliefs do
not oat loose in our mind either: they are organized internally
building up conceptions. That is, a persons conception is an orga-
nized system of beliefs that this person holds.
According to Greens model of conceptions (Cooney, 2001;
Green, 1971), beliefs are not always independent from each other
(or not entirely independent), and they gather in systems. In his
model, beliefs differ from each other with respect to three
dimensions. First, there are primary beliefs, and secondary beliefs,
which relate to each other in a quasi-logical way. Second, there are
central beliefs and peripheral beliefs. The former ones are strong,
from a psychological point of view, and more resistant to change;
the latter ones are weaker, and more likely to change, or either to be
undervalued and left aside when challenged with new conictive
experiences. Finally, beliefs form clusters that may be held sepa-
rately from each other. Greens model is particularly suitable for
understanding the sometimes incoherent, or apparently inco-
herent, relationship between belief and behavior: while we express
a certain belief, our current actions, as a situated reaction, might be
driven by another belief or set of beliefs which remain unspoken in
the background.
2.5. Purpose of this study
The purpose of this study is to explore in-service teachers
conceptions about the functions of assessment in basic schooling,
as a necessary rst-step before trying to challenge teachers prac-
tices towards formative assessment. Primary education teachers
and compulsory secondary mathematics teachers conceptions
were interviewed. This study focused on teachers conceptions,
concreted in beliefs about four different aspects: assessment effects
on teaching, on learning, on students accreditation of learning, and
on teachers accountability. The results of the qualitative analysis
lead to reections about the distribution of these conceptions along
the compulsory school levels in the context of school reform in
Spain.
3. Method
This paper presents a qualitative research, based on two
different interview techniques (Flick, 2007; Kvale, 1996). Data were
collected in two stages. In a rst phase, semi-structured, interpre-
tive interviews were carried out with fty primary and secondary
mathematics teachers. In a second phase, the same teachers were
interviewed with an event-recall technique, prompted by their own
classroom assessment material.
The study of teachers beliefs of assessment and assessment
practices has been addressed both from a quantitative perspective
(see for example, Brown, 2002, 2007), which allows cross-cultural
comparisons (see, for instance, Brown & Remesal, submitted for
evaluation; Liu, 2008a), and also from a qualitative methodolog-
ical approach (see, for instance, Chang, 2006; Simon et al., 2008).
The sociocultural understanding of teaching and learning processes
that leads this study puts to the front the necessity of approaching
teachers conceptions and practices from an interpretive, qualita-
tive methodology, which would allow the participants to speak
their minds and bring their own voices to the foreground.
3.1. Participants
Thirty primary teachers and twenty secondary mathematics
teachers from eighteen public primary and secondary schools in the
metropolitan area of Barcelona (Spain) participated in the study. All
the public schools were randomly visited; the project was pre-
sented at each school, until a group of ten teachers at each focused
grade agreed to take part in the study. The author presented the
project at each school personally, rst to the principal and then to
the mathematics teachers targeted by the study. These were
teachers who taught respectively in grades 1, 3, 5 of primary school,
and grades 7, and 9, which correspond to compulsory secondary
school in Spain. According to the structure of the current school
 A. Remesal / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 472e482
system, the teachers must take promotion decisions only every
second year. In other words, in odd grades, students progress
automatically to the next level. The justication of such a system
relies in a curriculum with instructional goals set for two years
programs, in an effort to promote formative assessment. That is, in
grades 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9, assessment decisions are more likely to be
closer to an assessment for learning approach, whereas the need for
certifying criteria increases in even grades. In addition, the certi-
cation of students achievement is not a single teachers responsi-
bility, but a teachers team decision. Each teacher decided to
participate on a voluntary basis. The participants are the individual
teachers: the data collected do not refer to school-level practices
but to individual teachers in their classrooms.
The participants were 45 years old on average, with an average
teaching experience of about 22 years. There were thirty seven
women and thirteen men. 52% of the teachers had graduated as
primary teachers, and 48% had a different subject matter degree
(for example, Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, etc.). In primary
education, the percentage of teachers with a teaching degree in
contrast with the teachers with any other subject matter degree
was almost 3:1, whereas exactly the opposite occurs for secondary
school.
3.2. Data collection
The teachers were interviewed twice for this study. A different
interview technique was used in each interview (Flick, 2007; Kvale,
1996). First, semi-structured interviews were carried out after
school with the teachers. This interview addressed topics such as
the characteristics of assessment and its relationship with teaching
and learning, and routine assessment practices in those teachers
classrooms. In a second meeting, approximately one month later,
the teachers were asked to provide some examples of typical
classroom assessment material; these materials became the
prompt basis for a critical-event-recall interview (Lally & Scaife,
1995). In this way, different sources of information would provide
a triangulation of data by conducting a constant comparison anal-
ysis (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). The teachers selected classroom
assessment materials as signicantly representative pieces of
material of their everyday practices, so as to achieve contextual
validity of data. The second interview had a more open structure,
with just a few prompts to let the teachers tell about the features of
the materials they brought in, the conditions in which they had
been recently implemented in the classroom, the evaluation
criteria that the teachers applied on students performance, and
eventually the consequences of that assessment in their teaching
program. In a few cases, the assessment had not been implemented
yet but was in the teaching plan for a near future; in such situations,
the teachers were asked to share their expectations of students
results. The interviews took place during the second and third
quarters of the school year. The meetings were held with each
teacher always respecting their school schedule.
3.3. Analysis
All interviews were audio-recorded and extensively transcribed
in order to perform qualitative content analysis by means of the
software NVivo (NVivo 1.2, QSR) (Basit, 2003). The qualitative
content analysis followed a recursive process (Bos & Tarnai, 1999)
through which progressively the categories were redened. The
initial categories were descriptive and located teachers answers
into broad, general topics: beliefs on assessment with respect to
teaching and learning, on the one side; accountability and perfor-
mance certication, on the other. Progressively, based on the
literature review, the excerpts were recoded into more detailed
475
categories. Positive and negative inclinations in the teachers words
were separately categorized. For instance, some teachers would
refer to assessment as challenging students in a positive way,
whereas others would refer to assessment as a stress factor; while
some teachers would talk about assessment in terms of monitoring
teaching, and others, in turn, would talk about a loss of instruc-
tional time.
The software allows the analyst to check the consistency of
categorization on a regular basis. Six months after the rst analysis
phase, a re-analysis was undertaken in order to look for intra-rater
consistency. Deviations from the rst analysis were discussed
with a second expert analyst until nal agreement or eventual
recategorisation.
4. Results
The recursive, qualitative, interpretive analysis led to a refor-
mulation of the theoretical model. Fig. 1 presents the model of
departure: conceptions about assessment were divided in two sets.
On the one hand, there were belief systems (building conceptions)
about assessment, related with the monitoring of both teaching and
learning processes. On the other hand, there were belief systems
about the certication of learning and the teachers accountability.
Eventually, the model was revised and reformulated as shown in
Fig. 2. The data revealed a much more complex world of concep-
tions about assessment, as a matter of fact. It was particularly
relevant to conrm that teachers do differentiate between beliefs of
assessment affecting teaching as something separated from the
inuence of assessment on learning. In a similar way, they do
differentiate between beliefs concerning accountability and those
concerning the accreditation of achievement. In each of these four
aspects, the teachers held either beliefs that tended to identify
assessment as a positive device of change, or either as a procedure
not leading to any change, a disruptive measure, or even a negative
inuence.
Teachers global conceptions were identied based on the
following criteria. First, the location of all of one teachers beliefs in
one and the same pole for the four different dimensions (assess-
ment effects on teaching, on learning, on teacher accountability,
and on student accreditation), either pedagogical or societal, was
labeled as a pure conception. Here, both manifested beliefs in the
rst or second interview, and inferred beliefs through the class-
room materials selected by the teachers were considered. Second,
the location of a teachers beliefs in different poles, in a proportion
3:1, was categorized as a mixed conception, either pedagogical or
societal, depending on the dominating pole.
Two kinds of results will be presented in the subsections that
follow. First, examples of each of the four categories of the
conceptions model are selected for an illustrative purpose. Second,
a basic quantitative description in terms of frequencies of the four
types of conceptions in the different school levels will be exposed.
4.1. Some illustrations of teachers conceptions of assessment
Boxes IeIV present instances of typical beliefs expressed by the
interviewed teachers in each of the four dimensions. It is crucial to
note that these beliefs are not mutually exclusive, but likely to
Pedagogical-regulation pole Societal-accreditation pole
(focus on the monitoring of teaching and (focus on teachers accountability and
learning) certification of achievement)
Fig. 1. Initial bipolar theoretical model of conceptions of assessment.
476 A. Remesal / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 472e482
Assessment effects on
learning
Assessment effects on
teaching
Pedagogical-regulation Societal-accreditation
Pole Pole
Assessment effects on the
certification of learning
Assessment effects on the
accountability of teaching
Fig. 2. Resulting four-dimensional bipolar model of conceptions of assessment.
appear in different combinations, inferred from the global data
provided by each individual teacher. Next four different cases of
teachers are presented. Each one represents an illustration of one
possible combination of beliefs building up different conceptions,
which are either extreme pedagogical, extreme societal, mixed
societal or mixed pedagogical. For each case a brief contextual
description is provided, followed by some interview excerpts which
illustrate the teachers conception about assessment. It is important
to notice that presenting a mixed conception means that one
teachers beliefs appear on one and the same pole for three of the
four dimensions, either pedagogical or societal. This combination
criterion leaves many combinatorial options available, all of them
with the same theoretical probability of occurrence. Nevertheless,
the results of this study show that some combinations were more
likely to be found than others. In four cases, the teachers could not
be clearly located after the rst analysis, showing a balanced
distribution (2:2), therefore, an additional expert judge was called
in to contrast. Finally, those teachers were categorized in a mixed
societal conception. As a matter of fact, societal beliefs concerning
the effects of assessment on learning, accountability of teaching,
and accreditation of achievement, being held concurrently with
pedagogical beliefs about assessment effects on teaching was the
most frequent and typical combination. This will be further
addressed in the discussion section.
Box 1. Indicators of beliefs of assessment effects on
learning
Examples of beliefs related to pedagogical conception:
B The student must be active in the design and
development of assessment (participating in the
design of tasks and the definition of criteria).
B Assessment provides an opportunity for learning
new content (didactical use assessment).
B An assessment situation offers an opportunity to
acquire and improve learning strategies.
B The students learn by identifying and correcting
their own mistakes.
Examples of beliefs related to a societal conception:
B Assessment allows the student to become aware of
the level of achievement, but just as an end result.
B Assessment is a motivational element, in order
to increase study effort (extrinsic pro-active
motivation).
B Assessment contributes also to extrinsically moti-
vate the student after he/she knows the results.
B Assessment has no real influence on learning, or
even a bad influence e like provoking irritation and
anxiety.
Box 2. Indicators of beliefs of assessment effects on
teaching
Examples of beliefs related to a pedagogical conception:
B A substantial change in assessment is needed in
order to meet the diverse educational needs of the
students.
B As a result of assessment, changes can be under-
taken immediate or short-term in tasks and class-
room materials.
B Assessment allows teaching readjustments at
school level (beyond the single classroom).
B Methodological changes are only possible in the
long term or for future courses.
Examples of beliefs related to a societal conception:
B Assessment alters the teaching rhythm in the
classroom negatively (the teacher has to slow down
when students do not follow, or either speed up
when the next test is close by).
B After unsatisfactory achievement in the group, the
teaching must be repeated exactly, going over the
learning contents a second time.
B Only changes at school level are sensible and
worthy (i.e. grouping of students, support teacher,
special needs attended off normal classroom,.).
B Assessment has no influence at all in teaching, or
either a negative impact (i.e. stress, loss of instruc-
tional time,.).
4.1.1. The pedagogical conception of assessment
The rst case corresponds to a 5th grade male teacher of
elementary school. Close to retirement, with more than 25 years of
teaching experience, he gives a clear priority to the monitoring
purpose of assessment. In the rst excerpt, we can see that the
teacher gives crucial importance to learning of ones errors; hence,
Box 3. Indicators of beliefs of assessment effects on the
accreditation of learning
Examples of beliefs related to a pedagogical conception:
B Assessment hardly serves as a selective instrument
because it does not allow comparison of results.
B The students individual progression must be taken
as a basic reference criterion for accrediting and in
order to undertake changes in teaching.
B Assessment must not be norm-based.
B A qualitative description of students learning is
preferable to numeric or categorical grading.
B Qualitative learning advances are more important
than quantitative advances.
Examples of beliefs related to a societal conception:
B Quantitative grading of achievement is above
qualitative assessment of the learning process.
B The accreditation must be norm-based.
B Results of assessment performance must be
expressed in numerical or categorical grades.
B In front of failure, the teacher should lower the
demands, or testing should be repeated, forgetting
about the first unsatisfactory results.
B Assessment is an indispensable needed social
control and selection system.
 A. Remesal / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 472e482
Box 4. Indicators of beliefs of assessment effects on the
accountability of teaching
Examples of beliefs related to a pedagogical conception:
B Assessment allows engaging in a whole systemic
change beyond the individual classroom or the
school.
B Families must be accurately informed about their
childrens learning in order to promote collaboration
between the school and the family.
B Communication about assessment must be multi-
directional with different audiences, including the
learners themselves.
B External comparative evaluation studies must be
rejected, if no connection is done with the particular
context.
Examples of beliefs related to a societal conception:
B External evaluation is accepted for comparison
purposes or just agreed upon with, but without
further interest.
B Communication with different audiences must be
unidirectional if the teacher is to keep his/her face.
B Families have a basic fundamental right to be
informed about their childrens results, but merely as
a passive recipient of information.
B The teachers professional activity must be justified
in front of different audiences (students, colleagues,
educational administration, etc.).
he gives the student an active role in a self-reective and inten-
tional correction of mistakes:
(.) If they dont correct their mistakes themselves, I think there
is no learning, theyd never know what theyve done, because
theyre still kids, so if you correct one thing and give it back to
them, they dont even look at it, then you have a lot of work for
the teacher and very little value to the student (.) (interview
EP35).
Beyond the value of assessment as a tool that supports the
learner in taking responsibility for his/her own learning process,
this teacher attaches the utmost importance to continuous daily
assessment, as a prerequisite for changes in education:
(.) I can do those, ahhm those periodic checks, but thats not
enough, learning assessment has to be done on a daily basis, what
the pupils do day by day, daily work done to date, . all that must
be evaluated, because if its not, then you cant change what youre
doing with the pupils, yeah, but from my point of view, its also
good to do some test, at times, so you can know if the pupils have
reected on what you taught them (.) (interview EP35).
Moreover, referring to the accreditation of achievement, the
teacher uses a metaphor to highlight the importance of assessment
as an instrument for quality control, and even in the case of nal
summative assessment, he emphasizes qualitative above quanti-
tative aspects:
(.) Its like a man in a factory, . if the results are assessed, and I
dont mean quantitative results but qualitative, it would .
because many times they assess quantitatively, dont they?
Saying they are producing many cars and many. croissants, or
whatever, but they also should assess whether those cars or
those croissants are well done, dont you think? Its obvious; if
they look at it, they will realize that its a good thing, to assess,
477
its really good indeed, absolutely indispensable Id say (.)
(interview EP35).
Finally, concerning accountability, the teacher shows how vital
it is, in his view, to communicate and collaborate with the families,
emphasizing the importance of a multidirectional communication
where the student acquires an active role, becoming responsible for
his/her learning process:
(.) pupils should come to the meetings, the teacher-family
meetings should not be held by teachers and parents only, if
there is any problem, the child has to know, he has to be there,
he must explain his point of view, and if there is any problem,
the pupil must know that the parents and the teacher do agree
with each other, that is, you cant talk to the parents without
giving the child the chance to become responsible, say,
accountable, but at the same time, his criterion is necessary,
what he says, and what he wants or not, what he likes or dislikes
(.) (interview EP35).
4.1.2. The societal conception of assessment
At the other end of the continuum of conceptions of assessment,
there are teachers whose beliefs can be located at the societal pole
in each of the four dimensions of analysis (assessments effects on
learning, teaching, and teachers and students accountability). The
following excerpts belong to a female 9th grade teacher, 44 years
old and with 20 years of teaching experience.
First, in her answers it is possible to identify how she perceives
assessment as dissociated from her teaching duties. Assessment
usurps time and energy from her teaching; she is convinced of the
fact that the only usefulness of assessment relies on its power to
force students to study, as a purely extrinsic motivation device,
based on fear of punishment:
(.) to me, its not useful at all, (.) its useful for them [the
students], if I didnt have to assess, it would be great, I would
focus just on teaching, what is assessment good for? Well, for
them to face the fear of grades, (.) if they know I assess them,
they work more (.) (interview BS22).
Secondly, for this teacher assessment is a benchmark, a refer-
ence point for the establishment of minimum levels of expected
performance, expressed in quantitative terms, which guarantees
the continuity and smooth functioning of the education and social
system:
(.) At this moment, its difcult for me to assess at secondary
school, because it has nothing to do with what I considered
assessment to be, and what I believe that society considers to be
assessment, namely just a mark, you can add a commentary,
indeed, but just the grades are important; so, if you give a pass,
people assume that a particular student will be able to enter
college (.) (interview BS22).
The previous excerpt must be interpreted in the context of the
national school reform. This teacher had been teaching at high
school under the previous regulation, which determined that high
school was not a basic schooling for every citizen. Only the best
students accessed high school prior to this Reform Act; the rest
were bound to vocational training or either the job market after
eight years of Basic Education. Hence, assessment in the former
high school system accomplished a deeper classication function.
After the Reform Act 1990, primary and secondary school levels
were reorganized, resulting in a compulsory secondary level, from
grade 7 to grade 10, where formative assessment is mandated (for
more information, see Remesal, 2007).
Finally, assessment appears for this teacher as an instrument of
one-way communication with families and students, supposedly
478 A. Remesal / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 472e482
interested in nal results only, once again on a quantitative modus,
while the teacher demonstrates a clear disregard for these same
results:
(.) I barely care about the marks that I give them, but, from the
point of view of the families, and also from the students point of
view, they need to see results, they need some kind of evalua-
tion, its important for them, but for me not at all, no (.)
(interview BS22).
4.1.3. A mixed pedagogical conception of assessment
The third instance belongs to a primary school teacher. She was
39 years old and had taught for 17 years. At the time of the study,
she was tutoring a third grade class. This teachers conception about
assessment can be considered as mixed pedagogical. On the one
side, her beliefs about assessment effects on teaching were very
strong in favor of the potentiality of assessment to lead and orient
daily teaching practice. She appreciated the potential of external
evaluation to provoke reection about the own practice:
(.) when we talk about assessment. I understand that this is
not writing on a paper and putting quantitative results. Thats
not real appraisal. Thats grading, isnt it? I rather understand
that assessment should be this sort of daily follow-up, contin-
uously observing what the child does, isnt it? I cant teach
without this follow-up. No way!, cause I dont know where they
are, whether my priorities and goals were really theirs as well.
So, I always must depart from where they are, so, I am always
evaluating, otherwise, I couldnt go on (interview CP24).
She also reckoned the importance of having parents as allies in
the assessment process, and her statements about the school-
family relationship reveal a respectful pursue of collaboration:
(.) well, sometimes the parents try to push their children ahead
during the summer break, and this can get tricky, because theyre
not aware of new teaching methods that were not used as they
were children themselves, and so the pupils are confronted with
different ways that they cant understand, and they might
collapse, so its our duty to care about these situations, being most
respectful with the families ways, but also avoiding these
confusions. Its not easy, at times, yeah, when parents dont really
understand the purpose of assessment, but its also important to
talk to them during the year, at parents interviews, not only at the
end for a summary, but while things are happening, so we can
work together, as a team, depending on where you put the accent,
families can receive the information in one way or the other, and
so they can feel more willing or reluctant to collaborate, it depends
on you, how you talk to them, its all relative (interview CP24).
Nevertheless, she identied several usual terms, such as exam,
control, test, with negative effects on learning. Instead, she
preferred to talk about the daily follow-up, based on informal
observation of her pupils performance in the classroom. In fact,
this teacher absolutely identied the term assessment with the
written form of exams or tests, and quantitative grading, which
made her discourse confusing, and had three consequences in her
case: rst, an instrument as important as initial assessment was
completely off her mind and intention:
I cant assess them at rst. First of all I must know all sorts of
things about how they approach learning and so on (.), when
they have a test, I feel like I loose an hour of chances to teach
them new things (.) (interview CP24).
Second, since she feels that written assessment tasks are only
useful for assessing speed of calculation, she rejects their potential
to access the pupils thinking processes; and third, linked to the
previous consequence, quite contradictorily, she let the pupils
actually voiceless in the process, playing down the opportunities to
speak their minds:
They know how they listen to, how they work, how they follow
me, how they feel interested or not. they know all that, they
have their own assessment inside their heads, well, they can be
more or less sincere, but they know perfectly well, I dont have
to ask them (interview CP24).
In summary, in this teachers conception, most of her beliefs,
concerning assessment effects on teaching, on accrediting, and on
account giving were on the pedagogical side. But her beliefs about
assessment affecting learning, mainly by means of grading, was
very strong on the societal side, building up altogether a mixed
pedagogical conception of assessment.
4.1.4. A mixed societal conception of assessment
Eventually, the fourth example belongs to a female teacher who
taught at 7th grade e rst year of compulsory secondary education,
corresponding to the Spanish school system e she was 39 years old,
had graduated in mathematics and had fteen years of teaching
experience. When speaking of teaching, she locates herself on the
pedagogical side, dening assessment as a basic tool for catering to
the learning needs of students:
(.) to me, its particularly useful; global assessment is useful to
locate the student, to check whether he needs more help or
more support of me, and also, not really to classify him, but of
course, if these students needs more help, then you can be closer
to him, pay more attention to him, and also, its useful to select
certain groups at certain times, to be closer to these groups, to
be able to work with them particularly, and maybe they cannot
be left on their own with some of the work they are expected to
do, and for this purpose daily assessment is very important,
particularly at these initial stages (.) (interview HS110).
In contrast, the other beliefs of this teacher clearly turn towards
the societal pole in all the remaining dimensions. First, with respect
to learning, we can see how the teacher thinks of assessment as
pro-active and just extrinsic motivating device for study:
(.) I think its a stimulus, its a stimulus . (.) when I say that
there is a test . the concern is much greater; I dont know if its
actually helpful because then you also have social issues inter-
fering with education, like bad-company aspects, the class
dynamics, group dynamics, broadly speaking, all this stuff
affects a lot, but usually when you warn them that there will be
a test, then at least a big part of the group, many of them take it
with quite some interest, at least there is a motivation (.)
(interview HS110).
This same teacher balances again in favor of the societal pole
when considering the after-school effects of assessment in its role
for accrediting achievement:
(.) assessment, if its thoroughly done. informs about the
students level of achievement and preparation (.); therefore,
I think that. yes, indeed, look, when they leave school, the
companies, industry, and society, in short, are already asking
whether some achievement has been reached, institutionally,
we are told that it is advisable to pass the exams, years ago it was
the basic general schooling, now its compulsory secondary
education, why? cause its needed, and indeed its not possible
to move forwards unless you dont pass CSE, you know you have
to go then to a nal, very basic vocational training if you fail,
while others can continue schooling, be it college or either
higher vocational training (.) (interview HS110).
 A. Remesal / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 472e482
Finally, as to the likely effects of assessment on teachers
accountability to different audiences, the teacher shows, on the one
hand, distrust in the capability of families to understand assess-
ment. She makes the family a mere recipient of one-way infor-
mation. On the other hand, there is her condence in the external
evaluation, yet conducted under quality requirements -which are
not explicitly made-, with social stratication as the main (posi-
tively evaluated) result:
(.) I think sometimes that parents, some parents, maybe are
not well-educated themselves, and so they may not understand
assessment well enough, now, thats also a bit of everybodys
responsibility, to explain what it means, and what the marks
mean (.) [the comparative studies] if they are well made, I
think that, yes, they can be quite useful, . because they point to
differences. if not for social levels, at least for cultural level (.)
(interview HS110).
4.2. Frequency of conceptions of the functions of assessment
Table 1 shows the frequency of the four conceptions of assess-
ment resulting of the analysis. The rst column shows the total
results (n 50); then results are divided by school level, primary
(n 30) and compulsory secondary education (n 20). Finally, the
table shows the distribution by grades, with ten teachers every
second grade starting from the rst grade. This distribution stands
in accordance with the Spanish school system, in which decisions
about pupils promotion and retention are taken by the school staff
collectively every two courses (except for grades 9 and 10, where
this has to be decided after each course).
These results are descriptive in nature; therefore, they cannot be
generalized. Some aspects of this distribution, however, deserve
closer attention. First, it is remarkable that most of the teachers
present mixed conceptions rather than pure ones. Second, alto-
gether, the most frequent conception is the mixed societal
conception. Concerning the rst aspect, the prevalence of mixed
conceptions over pure ones does support the argument of the
complex nature of assessment in school, and the need to consider all
purposes of assessment (for/of learning, accreditation/account-
ability) as part of the whole system affecting the daily classroom
practices in a continuous and inevitable tension. With respect to the
second aspect, the prevalence of societal conceptions reveals the
dominance of an assessment of learning approach in the teachers
conceptions, over an approach of assessment for learning that
would be more likely to improve the teaching and learning process.
However, there is another noteworthy result in the distribution
of conceptions comparing both educational levels. Namely, while,
in primary education (PE), there is a certain predominance of
teachers with a pedagogical conception, either pure or mixed; in
secondary education (SE) these conceptions are in minority, giving
way to societal conceptions, either pure or mixed. Thus, it seems
Table 1
Distribution of conceptions of assessment among participants.
Total School levels
N 50 Primary (p) Secondary (s)
n 30 n 20
Extreme pedagogical 8 6 2 2
16% 20% 10%
Mixed pedagogical 12 12
24% 40%
Mixed societal 22 10 12
44% 33.33% 60%
Extreme societal 8 2 6 2
16% 6.67% 30%
479
that the approximation of the end of basic schooling, even in the
absence of external evaluation e which will appear in Spain only
two years later, and only after post-compulsory secondary educa-
tion- makes the accreditation-societal beliefs come to the fore-
ground. Another interpretation of this distribution grounds on
the recent system change: secondary teachers are still too used to
the old system (prior to the Reform Act of 1990). Because of the
progressive implementation of the new system, which went on
until the late 1990s, at the time of data collection, the process of
change in the school context might be still too fresh and new to
have affected these teachers conceptions. They are struggling with
the changing context and their stronger beliefs (for example,
assessment serves to segregate successful students from unsuc-
cessful ones) do collide with the external policy demands.
5. Discussion
The results of this study witness the complexity of school
assessment, and show the limitations of the analysis of the func-
tions of school assessment based on strict dichotomous distinc-
tions, such as the early proposal by Wolf et al. (1991), or as the
confrontation of summative assessment versus formative
assessment would be. This point has been made before already in
previous research (Black & Wiliam, 1998, 2009; Perrenoud, 2001).
In this study, the focus was on teachers beliefs about assessment
with respect to four dimensions: the learning process, the teaching
process, accreditation of learning, and accountability of the
professional teaching activity. All these four dimensions are inter-
woven to construct a conception; they can hardly be considered
separated from each other, if assessment and school systemic
functions are truly to be taken into account (Stiggins, 2004).
There is a fundamental difference between previous studies
(Aguirre & Speer, 2000; Brown, 2002; Brown et al., 2009; Chang,
2006; Delanshere, & Jones, 1999) and the results of this study. The
model presented here tells about four dimensions along which
beliefs are idiosyncratically organized in order to build global
conceptions about assessment, dealing with all four aspects
(learning, teaching, accrediting students achievement, and teachers
accountability). However, they are weighing to a lesser or greater
extent to either of the poles of assessment functions, either peda-
gogical or societal-accrediting. In previous studies, conceptions about
assessment regulating teaching and learning go along together and
are treated as one and the same body of beliefs. In contrast, these new
results show that the way in which assessment affects teaching and
learning are two distinct aspects in teachers conceptions, and they
might be, yet need not be coherent with each other. In fact, in many
cases, the interviewed teachers manifested contradictory beliefs
about how assessment affects teaching and learning. As a matter of
fact, beliefs related to a positive monitoring of teaching by means of
assessment often did not come together with beliefs concerning
positive effects of assessment on the monitoring of learning.
Grades
Grade 1 (p) Grade 3 (p) Grade 5 (p) Grade 7 (s) Grade 9 (s)
n 10 n 10 n 10 n 10 n 10
1 3 2
4 7 1
4 2 4 6 6
2 4
480 A. Remesal / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 472e482
Results do not only show different conceptions in terms of
different combinations of beliefs along the four dimensions.
Moreover, there is also a certain tendency in the distribution of
these conceptions among the interviewed teachers. There was,
indeed, a higher incidence of societal and accrediting conceptions
of assessment at secondary school in comparison with primary
education, where the pressure of assessment as a tool for certi-
cation or accreditation of students achievement does not appear. In
summary, the results show not only that the interviewed teachers
have different and contrasted conceptions of assessment, but they
also allow hypothesizing that these conceptions could be related to
the structure of the educational system and the external assess-
ment policy demands. Previous research supports this hypothesis,
as well, (see for example, Barnes, Clarke, & Stephens, 2000). In other
subject matters primary and secondary teachers beliefs have been
proofed to be different, as well, (Estepa, Avila, & Ferreras, 2008).
Taking the different weigh of pedagogical knowledge and content
knowledge of primary and secondary teachers, the hypothesis of
extending these differences to the ground of classroom assessment
conceptions is fairly plausible.
The last decade of research in the eld of assessment brings
evidence in abundance of the difculties in changing assessment
practices in order to monitor learning in a positive way, so that
assessment of learning turns into assessment for learning (Harlen,
2005; Marshall & Drummond, 2006; Stiggins et al., 2005). The
results of this study contribute to locate these difculties princi-
pally in relation with two facts. First, we have to take into account
the complex nature of assessment itself, immersed in an inherent
state of tension between its educational and societal functions,
which, in turn, derive from the functions, structure and organiza-
tion of the whole educational system. Second, still today, we have to
reckon the persistence of an educational model mainly focused on
the teacher, whereas the learner remains in a secondary position. In
other words, attempts to change teacher assessment practices
towards assessment for learning will be unproductive, as long as we
ignore the teachers particular beliefs telling them that young
learners are not capable of assuming an active role in their learning
process, just for instance.
This study leaves doors open for further research as well. More
research is needed, for instance, to examine the relationships
between teachers conceptions of assessment and the educational
background of teachers, since this background differs signicantly
between primary and secondary teachers in most countries, with
the former usually having a stronger pedagogical and didactical
knowledge background, and the latter a deeper specic content
knowledge, regardless of the subject matter. Exactly for this latter
reason, it would be necessary to compare these results with studies
of teachers conceptions with respect to different curricular
subjects. To a certain extent, the results of this study might be
somewhat content specic in the area of mathematics (the
secondary teachers were mathematics specialists; the primary
teachers, responsible for a global education in all subject areas,
were interviewed focusing on mathematics teaching and learning).
Also, it would be appealing to contrast these results of interview
and classroom material analysis in a recall interview, with class-
room observation of actual daily practices as developed by teachers
and students. Last but not least, it would be intriguing to replicate
this same study after the time that has passed since the data
collection, since the changes intended by the Reform Act have
settled down, and a new educational culture could have been
constructed and established.
Despite these limitations, however, the results of this study
with respect to the identication and description of different
conceptions of assessment are particularly valuable for teacher
educators. The four dimensions, on which conceptions of
assessment seem to ground, provide a convenient reference for the
critical review of teacher education programs. These results must
be taken into account, if we aim at the development of teachers
assessment competencies towards the implementation of assess-
ment practices, likely to improve educational processes in its full
extent and complexity.
6. Conclusions
In this paper results of the qualitative content analysis of fty
primary and secondary teacher interviews are presented. A model
for conceptions of assessment functions is proposed based on a two
pole continuum concerning four different categories of beliefs that
would build teachers conceptions of assessment, namely, teachers
beliefs about assessment inuence on teaching, on learning, on the
accreditation of achievement, and on the teachers accountability to
different audiences. Results have a twofold signicance, related to
previous research. First, teachers conceptions of assessment
functions might be related to the structure of the educational
system, tending either towards more pedagogical or more accred-
iting conceptions with regard to the external assessment demands
on school. Second, teachers conceptions of assessment functions
might be composed by different, and sometimes even contrasting,
beliefs concerning the role of assessment in teaching and in
learning considered separately. This last point might help under-
stand the difculties for the implementation of assessment for
learning innovative practices.
Acknowledgements
The study was carried out by means of a doctoral scholarship of
the University of Barcelona. The author wants to thank Dr. C. Coll for
his guidance along the conduction of this study and his constructive
feedback on previous versions of this paper. The author also wants
to thank Dr. L. Harris for her helpful feedback on a previous version
of the paper. The author of this work is member of the Develop-
ment, Interaction and Communication in Educational Contexts
Consolidated Research Group. This group has been supported and
nanced by the Generalitat de Catalunya since 1995 (2009 SGR
933).
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