Ethical and professional considerations in assessment

Abstract EN

The issues of professionalism and ethical considerations in assessment have caused perplexity and controversy among educators and practitioners during the last few decades in teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL).

It has been observed that assessment criteria do not abide by the worldwide conventions, and teachers do face difficulties in having a single standard testing scale.

Thus, this study aims at looking, first, at the notion of assessment in the Algerian context, and investigates how this latter is conceived from an ethical and professional lens.

It attempts to shed light on how teachers could manage to balance between their ethical values and professional practices, and the demands of the stakeholders and market.

The current study adopts an exploratory approach to address three focal research questions.

First, it attempts to identify the different testing methods used by EFL teachers.

Second, it delves into the strengths and limitations of the multi-sources of evaluation conventions adopted in the EFL context.

Third, it examines the properties of testing scales employed in the English department.

The study involves 48 teachers of the department of English at Batna 2 University.

The study has shown that EFL teachers at Batna 2 University tend to have different benchmarks for examining learners’ oral and written productions.

Also, it has been found, also, that EFL teachers do value more the ethical aspect of assessment and the different professional practices at the expense of testing standards, notwithstanding that there are some teachers who are unaware of the different testing criteria.

In fact, this study endeavors to come up with some concrete proposals for reconsidering the aspect of assessing EFL proficiency.