The status of teachers assessment literacy in Iran

this study investigated the assessment literacy status of Iranian EFL and field specialist ESP teachers to see the extent to which their levels of assessment literacy are compatible. To this purpose, a mix-method, exploratory design approach consisting of two phases (i.e, quantitative and qualitative) aimed at collecting data from 80 Iranian university teachers who sit for both a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. Analyses of the data showed that first Iranian EFL university teachers and field specialist ESP university teachers do not have acceptable level of assessment literacy and second there are significant differences among them on the nine sub-scales of assessment literacy. Though the EFL university teachers showed higher assessment literacy level than the field specialist ESP university teachers, both groups suffer from significant deficiencies which not only indicate weaknesses in EFL teacher education programs as far as language testing and assessment are concerned, but also are persuasive enough to render specific assessment education for each group involved in foreign language teaching programs.