The effects of high-stakes assessments on mathematics instructional practices of selected teachers in Nigerian senior secondary schools

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT : This study investigated the effects of high-stakes assessments on mathematics teachers'instructional, preparatory and assessment practices at senior secondary school level inKaduna State, Nigeria. High-stakes assessments are standardized examinationsadministered at the end of every level of education in order to make significant educationaldecisions about the students, teachers and the schools as well as about graduation,selection and placement of students in different levels of education. The study alsoinvestigated how the West African Senior School Examinations (WASSCE) influenceteachers' beliefs about what constitutes effective teaching of mathematics. The study alsointerrogated opportunities and challenges faced by teachers in their continuousassessment (CA) practices for the West African Examinations Council's (WAEC) highstakes examinations. The essence, therefore, was to find out what mathematics is taught,how it is taught and continuously assessed, the reasons for the practices, and whetherthey enhanced or diminished prospects for students' success in high-stakes examinationsand admission to higher education institutions.This interpretive study adopted a qualitative ethnographic case study design whose datawere generated from lesson observations of ten mathematics teachers, in-depthinterviews with the same teachers, and an analysis of related official documents. Datacollected through lesson observation protocols and interview schedules were analysedfor content and emergent themes. The findings showed that the Kaduna State teachers'mathematics instructional practices were influenced by the WAEC high-stakesexaminations in multiple ways. Teachers were observed unsystematically drilling andcoaching students, and rushing to cover curriculum content they thought had a highlikelihood of being tested in the final examinations. They predominantly employedtraditional methods of instruction. Teachers over-emphasized the use of WAEC's pastexamination question papers sometimes at the expense of the kind of robust conceptualunderstanding encouraged by Schoenfeld. This reduced most of the instructional,preparatory and continuous assessment practices to the level of what Popham refers toas 'teaching to the test'. Findings from in-depth interviews of teachers were that theybelieved that their students should pass the WAEC high-stakes examinations at all costs and to that end believed and preferred instructional strategies that spoon-feed studentswith solution procedures to be memorised mindlessly for recall during the examinations.Students were not given time to engage in critical thinking or to share multiple problemsolutions strategies.There were doubts among the teachers about the credibility of the final grades awardedto their students after the inclusion of school-based continuous assessment scores (CA).Reasons were mainly based on mistrust and perceived lack of fairness in arriving at thefinal scores. Some of the opportunities for teachers in the school system were theirinvolvement in the assessment of students' performance and also that they hadopportunities for continuous professional development by WAEC, the government as wellas universities.In short, the mathematics teachers experienced the structuring effects of WAEC'sWASSCE and other high-stakes examinations on their instructional and assessmentpractices. Understanding the influence that shapes the instructional and assessmentpractices will be valuable in pointing to what it is that needs to be done to reduce thenegative effect of high-stakes assessments in order for them to become supportive ofinstructional practices. Teachers are supposed to be engaged in teaching forunderstanding and equitable access to legitimate mathematical knowledge for allstudents and not to be influenced by the excessive demands of high-stakes assessmentsalone. Teachers need to be supported through appropriate teacher professionaldevelopment to change their beliefs and to embrace the idea that all students can learnmathematics if treated equitably, recognizing the individual differences that distinguishone student from another, and taking into account these differences in their instructionalpractices.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University