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Teachers’ Assessment Literacy Enhancement
Start date: Sep 1, 2015, End date: Aug 31, 2018 PROJECT  FINISHED 

There is evidence that Language Testing and Assessment (LTA) can have a strong impact on the quality of the learning outcomes. Yet, English Language Teachers (ELTs) cannot deliver professional results if they are not sufficiently trained in the area of LTA. Unfortunately, research has shown that in many educational systems across Europe, ELTs are unable to create good quality assessment materials and procedures. This is at least partly because they are not sufficiently trained in the area of LTA: the lack of what has been termed as 'assessment literacy'. Given the current state of affairs, there is an urgent need to develop an efficient, relevant, scalable and sustainable LTA training infrastructure for ELTs, which can eventually be of benefit to other language teachers as well. Consisting of a network of experts from five different European countries (Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Germany and the UK), the Teachers’ Assessment Literacy Enhancement (TALE) project will build on a solid identification of LTA training needs of pre- and in-service English Language Teachers in order to provide a training ecosystem that will cater for these needs. Overall, the TALE project will contribute towards: - the development of innovative training materials and services, that will be delivered through traditional face-to-face and online learning and offered through synchronous and asynchronous modes for the enhancement of the required LTA skills and competencies. The proposed training ecosystem will offer continuous support and mentoring to teachers in the respective countries. - the expansion and the exchange of LTA expertise between European educational contexts in a creative and innovative way - the cooperation between and within different disciplines, e.g. education (foreign/second language teaching and testing, assessment literacy, Content and Language Integrated Learning assessment and eLearning/distance education) and various sectors of training and the workplace in order to foster efficient and meaningful assessments suitable for all types of language learners in primary and secondary education. - the synchronization and harmonization of foreign language teacher training and assessment practices in the field of LTA in Europe and beyond. The training endeavor will follow three main phases. The first phase involves needs analysis which will be achieved through a comprehensive literature review on current thinking in language assessment literacy and an extensive consultation with ELTs to ensure that the new course will meet their needs. The results of this phase will be used as input in the next phase. The second phase will involve the development and piloting of the online training materials and services. During piloting, feedback mechanisms will be put in place to ensure that the stakeholders will be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the training course. The feedback will be given due consideration and revisions will be made accordingly. Once the project partners have worked with and refined the materials and the evaluation process is complete, the Handbook of Language Teaching and Assessment will be drafted, refined, piloted and finally published to enable and promote wider implementation of the project beyond the partner organisations. The handbook will contain successful LTA activities and tasks, as well as, samples of student performances derived from the implementation of the pilot training course. It will also include the most successful training materials from the implementation of the course compiled by the consortium partners for pre- and in-service ELTs to help language teachers develop and enhance their language assessment literacy. The third key phase of the project, which runs concurrently with the other two, involves a) project management, b) evaluation and quality assurance and c) dissemination, exploitation and sustainability. The main target audiences of the project are: 1)pre-service and in-service English Language Teachers , 2) students, 3) educational policymakers, 4) experts and researchers in LTA and 5) pre-service and in-service language teachers, in general. In each of the participating countries, two multiplier events will take place aiming to disseminate the results of the needs analysis and the online training course, respectively. In these events mainly pre-service and in-service ELTs will participate and also persons from the last three categories of stakeholders mentioned above. Near the completion of the project, a final conference will be organised in order to raise awareness on the main intellectual outputs of the project: the needs analysis, the online course and the handbook.
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