Learners’ voices in school based assessment: a case of one school in the Uthukela District.

Abstract

Guided by my understanding of the importance of SBA in Tourism, my main aim was to determine if both summative and formative assessment helped learners to master the required SBA tasks. My desire to pursue this study emanated from my personal interest in and professional experiences of teaching Tourism in Grades 10-12. In my experience, new curriculum changes resulted in the introduction of new assessment practices. This study was framed by the learners’ (or students’) conceptions of assessment theory (SCoA) that was developed by Brown, Irving and Peterson (2008) as a theory that aims to understand learners’ conceptions of assessment. According to Brown and Hirschfeld (2012), learners have at least four major conceptions about assessment as revealed in the Student Conception of Assessment model. Although this theory that was developed by Brown and colleagues was suitable for a survey, this study adapted it as a suitable theoretical framework for a qualitative study on learners’ experiences of SBA in Tourism. Learners who participated in this study demonstrated wide ranging perceptions of SBA, and many of these perceptions contributed to their learning. All participating learners also perceived SBA as a means of improving their ability to be promoted to the next grade at the end of the year as they emphasised the importance of SBA marks for promotion. They also highlighted the challenges that they faced when required to complete SBA tasks; such as time constraints, poor feedback and lack of resources. In general learners commented favourably on the role of SBA in their learning.