The Potential for Implementing Democratic Assessment through Authentic Assessment Practices in the Context of Kurdistan Region Public University English Departments
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26750/Vol(11).No(3).Paper39Keywords:
Democratic Assessment, Authentic Assessment Practices, Critical Language Testing, Assessment Ethicality, Fair Assessment, Student AccommodationAbstract
This study explored the potential for implementing democratic assessment through conducting authentic assessment practices in three university English departments in the Kurdistan Region. Democratic assessment could be tremendously influential in education as it allows teacher-student negotiations about educational issues, resulting in making progress in education. Specifically, the study investigated the nature of teacher-student relation, the power of EFL students in discussing and making decisions about how to assess them, the provision of assessment ethicality through student accommodation, and the educational benefits of democratic assessment. All these issues were investigated by employing two research methods: interviews with 15 university EFL teachers and three focus group interviews, epistemologically adopting interpretivism and phenomenological approach. The findings revealed that, firstly, democratic assessment through authentic assessment practices were implemented along with satisfactory teacher-student relations, but still inadequate, unplanned, and students were not befriended. Secondly, it discovered that, although teachers believed in students’ rights to discuss assessment issues with their teachers, students’ power in discussing and making decisions as to how to assess them were limited in terms of disregarding students’ opinions and being indifferent about their preferences. Thirdly, participants believed in implementing various authentic assessment practices, instead of one shot exams, to provide fair assessments leading to assessment ethicality. Fourthly, to varying degrees, all the participants admitted, perceived, or believed that democratic assessment could have significant benefits for teaching and learning English language, achieving fairer, more accurate, more reliable, and more valid assessments accompanied by multi-dimensional feedback to students, resulting in more learning progress.
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