A Case Study on Pre-Service English Teachers’ Formative Assessment Teacher Cognition

Abstract

This dissertation explores student teachers’ construction of formative assessment teacher cognition with a sociocultural perspective in language teacher education context. The current study has three focal points to investigate: the factors influencing the construction of pre-service language teachers’ formative assessment cognition, how the construction process of formative assessment teacher cognition progresses, and how sociocultural resources mediate the construction process of formative assessment teacher cognition. With these aims, a holistic single-case study was adopted as the research design. A total of eight senior student teachers of English constituted the participants of the present case study. The data were collected through multiple sources including reflective journals, documents (lesson plans), semi-structured interviews, classroom observation (field notes), and pre-observation and post-observation conferences. The collected data were analysed through a grounded content analysis and sociocultural discourse analysis. The analysis resulted in three major factors as the main sources of pre-service language teachers’ formative assessment cognition: prior language learning experiences, teacher education, and contextual factors. The findings also indicated that the construction process of formative assessment cognition progressed through six main major shifts: dissonance, exploration of teaching-related beliefs, self-examination, re-examination of alternatives, approval, and integration. In this construction process, sociocultural means like mediation and cognitive/emotional dissonances were also detected and explained in relation with the findings. In the light of the results, pedagogical implications for L2 teacher education, teacher cognition, and formative assessment were provided.