Hong Kong primary and secondary school English teachers’ conception growth of technology-enabled alternative assessment and the dynamic development relationship with teacher assessment practices

Alternative assessment refers to assessments other than conventional paper-and-pen
assessments, namely podcasts, project work, e-Portfolio assessment, or other multimedia
modes of assessment. Alternative assessment has been an increasingly popular discourse
in education reform agendas around the globe. The meritocratic assessment system in
Hong Kong, in particular, has shifted the public attention from undesirable competition
(i.e. norm-referenced assessment) to alternative assessment (i.e. criterion-referenced
assessment), which is necessary to alleviate the negative washback effects of highstakes exams on pupils in both primary and secondary education. Technology
advancement has also exerted a significant impact on assessment because Hong Kong
English teachers, like their counterparts in other parts of the world, have begun
integrating various levels of technology into education for instructional and evaluative
purposes to assess pupils’ language skills in emergencies, such as the pandemic or
unpredictable natural disasters. Against this backdrop, teachers’ understanding and use
of technology-enabled alternative assessment and their immediate experience of
different alternative assessment methods better suited to support pupil learning than
conventional and psychometric methods in their classroom contexts are considered topics
of great interest. Nevertheless, most current studies focus on teachers’ conceptions of
one single alternative assessment method rather than their overall conceptions of
multiple alternative assessment methods (e.g., online peer assessment, e-Portfolio
assessment, or AI-powered automatic writing evaluation systems) adopted over time.
Thus far, research on the development process of teachers’ conceptions and practices of
assessment is scant so there is inadequate evidence to hypothesize the dynamic
development relationship between teachers’ conceptions and practices of assessment in a
systematic manner. To address these conceptual and practical gaps, this proposed project
aims to investigate about 500 Hong Kong primary and secondary school English
teachers’ conception development and practice changes of technology-enabled
alternative assessment over one year with the combination of a longitudinal and a
microgenetic study. This proposal is likely to yield impactful and innovative findings by
identifying the contextual factors that affect Hong Kong English teachers’ conceptual
understanding and cognitive engagement of specific technology-enabled alternative
assessment methods, such as beliefs, digital competence, or a larger exam system. More
importantly, it further explores the relationship between Hong Kong English teachers’
conceptions of technology-enabled alternative assessment and their actual assessment
practices to build a dynamic developmental model.