Fairness in Classroom Language Assessment from EFL Teachers' Perspective

The significance of fairness in assessment is not a subject of doubt for educationalists even with fundamentally contrastive perspectives, but the study of methodological means for safeguarding this concept in educational classroom contexts has only received the scant attention of the researchers and educationalists. On this basis, this study intended to conceptualize foreign language (FL) classroom assessment fairness from EFL teachers' perspective. For this purpose and as a part of a larger enterprise, the researchers first strived for the creation and validation of a Classroom Assessment Fairness Scale (CAFS). This process was informed by the related literature and applied a critical incident technique. To verify the scale's validity and reliability, it was first expert viewed and modified accordingly; next pilot-tested on a group of 250 teachers, and finally, the amassed data were subjected to exploratory and confirmatory factorial analyses and internal consistency measures. The validated scale was taken by 120 Iranian EFL teachers. Descriptive analyses indicated that the EFL teachers were familiar with fairness principles in classroom assessment practices. They were aware of the significance of the opportunity to learn, the opportunity to demonstrate learning, the no-harm principle, the constructive classroom environment, and transparency as the constructive elements of classroom assessment practices' fairness. However, the same familiarity and awareness were not guaranteed for the score pollution component. The results further demonstrated that the teachers' gender, educational degree, teaching experience, and teaching context led to statistically significant differences among EFL teachers' attitudes to classroom assessment fairness.