Assessment conceptions of Turkish mathematics teachers of international middle years programme (MYP)

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate Middle Years Programme (MYP) Mathematics Teachers conceptions of assessment. It was also aimed at find ing out the relationship between teachers’ conceptions of assessment, curriculum ori entation and mathematics related beliefs. Quantitative data were gathered through an online survey which contains Teacher Conceptions of Assessment Abridged Scale (TCoA-IIIA), Curriculum Orientation Scale (COS), Mathematics Related Beliefs Scale (MRBS) and some open ended questions from 30 MYP mathematics teachers. Qualita tive data was collected by conducting interviews with 3 of these teachers. The descrip tive results revealed that MYP mathematics teachers mostly think that assessment is for Improvement while moderately agreeing on accountability purposes. Correla tion analysis indicated a strong positive correlation between Improvement and Student Accountability conceptions. Irrelevance had negative correlations with Improvement and School Accountability. Traditional beliefs had moderate negative correlations with Improvement and Student Accountability. On the other hand, there was a moderate positive correlation between Student Accountability and Constructivist Beliefs. The interviews were analyzed with two methods, (i) coding for teachers’ conceptions of as sessment and (ii) thematic analysis. Improvement (66 codes), Student Accountability (15 codes) and Irrelevance (2 codes) conceptions were appeared in the first analysis. In addition, thematic analysis revealed 6 themes about teachers’ conceptions of assessment in relation with curriculum.