Performance assessment: Teachers beliefs and practices in higher education

Received May 9, 2019 Revised Aug 22, 2019 Accepted Oct 16, 2019 In educating the students, teachers’ beliefs on teaching and learning influenced not only on what to teach and how to do it, but also on how to assess their students. Education has a goal that students can apply the knowledge gained in real world activities. Through assessment process, it helps them to understand their strengths and weaknesses of their abilities development. This research aims to find out teachers’ beliefs about performance assessment and how they use it to assess their students in one of public college under The Ministry of Industry in Indonesia. Data findings are obtained by using interviews, observation and document analysis conducted on T1 and T2 as the participants. Researcher used the five elements of performance assessment to make the instruments and analyze the findings. Results indicated that there were differences between what they say and what they do. The differences appeared because of the theories they knew, their own knowledge and experiences they have in teaching.


INTRODUCTION
Assessment is a part of teaching and learning process which has a large impact on the learning process of students [1].Teachers have a role to teach and facilitate the students to develop their abilities.However, the research which focused on the beliefs of the teacher about assessment has not been done much by researcher, especially in higher education in the EFL context.The term 'belief' itself is defined as what people think and do [2].Pajares [3] defined belief as what people say, intend and do as the impression of someone's judgement over the things around her.In education, beliefs of teachers about teaching and learning influence their instructions process in the classroom.
According to [4], the focus of teachers' beliefs are on how they think about the best way to do to have an effective teaching and learning.The beliefs of the teachers also mean as their convictions and used as a guide which are considered to be true and act as a media that can perceive new experiences [5].When the teachers assess their students, their judgement on the students' behaviour and performance are shaped by the theories from their teaching and learning experience.Teachers' beliefs are being shown through their selection of approaches and materials, their procedures, judgements and behaviour in teaching and learning process.It influences not only on what to teach and how to do it, but also how to assess their students' development ability.The way the teachers see the process of learning is important on how they interpret teaching as an activity, but it is also important on how they interpret assessment.Assessment is one of classroom activities which has a fundamental purpose in promote learning and achievement.Ioannou-Georgio and Pavlou [6] claim assessment as a term used to describe the way instructors find out the development of students in understanding knowledge and mastering skills based on the material given.It ISSN: 2089-9823  Performance assessment: Teachers beliefs and practices in higher education (Lukluk Argita Munif)

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helps not only to measure students' improvements through several kind of tests but also to perform well in the process.The students' learning needs nowadays do not fit the traditional model.They are no longer learn the learning facts and basic skills, but the students need to acquire more complex skills in conceptualisation and problem-solving.Students are expected to use and develop the knowledge they get, connect all the knowledge they have to build understanding of the topics that have been determined, practice them with assignments and present the final results through communication [7].They need learning experiences from those kind of tasks that they may expect to face in real life.Authentic assessment is needed to achieve the purpose.It helps teachers to analyze the students' ability improvement that is consistent with the environment outside the class [8].Authentic assessment is designed to show their ability of the skills and competencies needed to face real-life problems and also provides feedback to inform them about their development.Performance assessment is one of the assessments that fulfill all of those characteristics.
Performance assessment is a method that measure the knowledge and skills that have been mastered by the students [9].It offers more than one ways for the students to do the demonstration of their content knowledge and sets of additional skills within the classroom [10].These additional skills are attitude, creativity, ethics, honesty, teamwork and others behaviors and dispositions that needed in the classroom and real-world.Performance assessment assess productive and observable skills, like oral production, written production, open-ended responses and integrated performance of content-valid tasks [11].The types of knowledge and skills that should be mastered by the students are able to create, reflect, solve problems, collect and use informations.The teachers should assess not only these aspects but also on how they use them to perform the tasks.
In the implementation of performance assessment, it needs a concrete task, also its coherence with response format and scoring system done by a student and scored by a rater or teacher who assess his/her performances based on the provided procedure and the accuracy of the response.Gareis [12] supported that a cogent set of intended learning outcomes, authentic performance task, appropriate and feasible response format, accurate and clear prompt, and accurate and reasonably objective performance criteria should be included in implementing performance assessment.Ruiz-Primo and Shavelson [13] also made a framework of performance assessment that consists of the components of its assessment which is needed in its implementation.
Intended learning outcome or learning objective is general statement to be achieved in teaching learning process which is made by the teacher.It is very important to be achieved by the learners in order to know their capabilities in mastering the lessons.It is a result statement that captures specifically what knowledge, skills, and attitude that should be achieved for the learners, while for the teachers, they should be able to demonstrate all of them in order to help the learners achieved the learning objectives.Tasks, that consist of significant problems and require solutions that use concrete materials correlating with the actions of the students.Wren [14] states that performance task is a structured situation where the materials given and requested information or action are demontrated to an individual, who generate a response that can be assessed using explicit standards.The performance tasks consist of problems that are targeting the students' knowledge and content as well as their ability in using these skills for reasoning and problem-solving.It also should reflect the real problems that appear in the real-world (authentic).These tasks are very useful to be practiced and used repeatedly because it requires the students to apply their skill and knowledge.
Response-format is the media that is used by the teachers to get the students' information of the assessment.Mislevy and Knowles [15] state that in educational assessment, there are two response-formats available that can be used to collect performance information of the students, that are: (a) selected-response items (where the students are choosing from the choices available, for example multiple-choice, matching or true-false) and (b) constructed-response items (where the students construct their answers by their own responses, for example short-answers or essays).Prompts are usualy used to help in teaching, reminding, and reinforcing students abilities in compiling tasks or practicing set of skills.It can be used also to increase the possibilities of the students to show the desired response.Prompts can be for challenging the students in completing the tasks, but must be recognizable and easily interpreted by them.There are six types of prompts that usually used by the instructors in guiding their students, that are: (a) physical prompts, (b) verbal prompts, (c) model prompts, (d) gestural prompts, (e) visual prompts and (f) prositional prompts [16].A scoring system, consists not only the judgment of the right answers, but also the reasons of the answers used to do the tasks.The performance assessment scoring should always be made before the tasks and the assessment are being developed.According to [17], there are three scoring system that usually used by a teacher in assessing students' performance.The scoring system are rubrics, checklist and rating scale.These components of performance assessment are used by the researcher to define the beliefs of the teachers about this assessment and how it influence its implementation. ISSN: 2089-9823 Stiggins [18] adds that the teachers should use another approach to assess their students.They should use assessment not only to measure students' progress continuously, but also to show and tell them about the useful information that they can use in the real practice.Recently, assessment discourse has identifies that feedback for the students is central in teaching and learning process.When the forms of assessment used by the instructors have already authentic, then they should also provide feedbacks on the students performances which reflected on the kinds of real-world feedbacks that they might face.With these new information about assessment, the practices in assessing the students have change the way teachers believe it, especially in Indonesia.
In Indonesia, the importance of assessment has been realized which is marked by the changes in curriculum from the old paradigm into the newest concept that students as the center of learning.The educators also aware of the role of assessment that should be considered as a process in which its purpose is not only focusing on the score of the students and achieveing the general goals but also to know the students' progress in learning, to tell their weaknessess and help them to cover it.This phenomenon is in line with [19] opinion that teachers cannot fed anything from the outside to teach the students.Piaget also states that they should realize that a classroom is their media to teach the students constructing their knowledge through critical thinking, primary resources and direct activities.While the assessment itself has a role in finding out the extent to which the students improvements in using the knowledge and skills they get during the learning process.
Assessment, however, is not used in traditional way of assessing like focusing only on grades, licensure or etc.It has become a media both for the students and the teachers to learn.But not all of the English teachers in Indonesia are aware on the implementation of an appropriate assesssment method used to assess the students ability in English for Foreign Language (EFL) classes.It is also valid for the higher education where the ultimate goal of learning English is that the students can apply the knowledge they get from the college in the workplace.Higher education is a stage of education that is expected to be able to prepare students to be ready to enter the world of work after they finish their education.Therefore, the role of assessment is very important for the students to know their strengths and weaknesses in mastering a skill.Assessment also has an important role for lecturers to be able to know the abilities of their students and also help them to be able to compete with graduates from other institutions.The lecturers have responsible to find the assessment criteria that suitable for the students ability development.These criteria are decided based on the students need and also their future workplaces.The lecturers also should consider the autenticity of learning and assessing in order for the students familiar with the condition they have in the workplace.The assessment process begins with the construction of reality.Bruner [20] stated that reality construction is the result of meaning making formed by the way of thoughts.These thoughts are based on beliefs that guide them in determining the most effective way to teach and assess the students.
In line with the main aim of assessment process, one of public college under Ministry of Industry in Indonesia is applying this goal.This institution has applying performance assessment to know their students improvement abilities.The challenges they faced were varied when using this assessment method.Because they taught in ESP program, they should give more efforts in doing research about their students future workplace in order to create and conduct a suitable assessment method.Beside that, this assessment needs additional time than traditional assessment in arranging all the aspects of assessment.But, despite with all the challenges faced by the lecturers in implementing the new assessment method, they stated that this kind of assessment method were very helpful in helping the students to master the intended skills and knowledge, along with the attitude that is expected to guide them become independent learners.According to the reason, the aim of this research is to find out the beliefs and practices of the teachers in using performance assessment to assess their students development.
Mubarak's work [21] stated that teachers' belief that performance task is able to outline the realistic context of the content and at the same time, integrate the different learning outcomes of different topics.But there are different facets of student's understanding.According to the teacher interviewed, performance task is unable to measure all the different facets.On the contrary, the crafting of the performance task starts from looking at the different facets of understanding.In addition to Mubarak work, Aliningsih and Sofwan [22], in their work also stated that all of the participants agreed that using authentic assessment to assess their students improvements lead them to have positive perceptions toward it.Applying a meaningful task which has relation with the students real-world really affected the students results in using their knowledge and skills achieved during teaching and learning process.However, the participants did not apply the assessment process properly because they directly assessed the students without using the recommended instruments, like rubric, checklist, rating scale and many others.In Chang's work [23], the participants believed that by using various way in oral language assessment, they could understand better the students oral language abilities in a whole view.Most of them saw assessment as an extention of teaching and learning process and have very important effects on student ISSN: 2089-9823  Performance assessment: Teachers beliefs and practices in higher education (Lukluk Argita Munif) 521 developments.These beliefs really influenced the participants decision making about the practices of assessment they do.Ping Wang [24] also explained that the participants beliefs and practices were shaped by the objectives of the science schools and The National College Entrance Examination.They used the assessment to evaluate the students performances, to give the score or grade and to guide the instructions.
Another aspects that influence their beliefs and prcatices were the culture of the schools, like administration, colleagues, class size and the length of the class period.While the purpose of this research is to find out the beliefs of the participants about the implementation of performance assessment in one of public university under Ministry of Industry in Indonesia.The research that has been conducted on performance assessment only occurs in secondary schools.In addition, using performance assessment to assess the students in higher education, especially in EFL context, is still very rare.The problems faced by the instructors who have used authentic assessment in assessing their students become a scourge for others.
In the other hand, this public university under Ministry of Industry in Indonesia determined to use performance assessment in assessing their students.This is the reason why researcher decided to find out the beliefs of the lecturers in choosing to use this assessment.

RESEARCH METHOD
This research is qualitative study and case study is used as the approach when conducting it because the main purpose is to find out the actual case [25].In this research, the researcher is trying to find out teachers' beliefs in implementing performance assessment to assess their students.It uses case study since it can give a deeper information about the subject being researched.The research was conducted during May until July 2018 in a public college under Ministry of Industry in Indonesia.It investigates two participants as the teachers in the college who use performance assessment to assess their students' ability.Each of the teacher has 5 and 8 years teaching experiences (further the participants will be called as T1 and T2).Teachers' experience in teaching is really important because it can leads them to create their beliefs in how to manage the class, how to teach the students, how to solve the problems happened in class and how to choose the best assessment systems to assess the students' ability development.The data were taken using interview, observation and document analysis as the data collecting method.The elements of performance assessment from Ruiz-Primo & Shavelson [13] and Gareis [12] are used to define the beliefs of performance assessment.The analysis was based on the three main stages of data analysis proposed by Miles and Huberman [26].The validity and reliability of the data is very important as well as the process of collecting and analyzing the data.

RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
Based on the theories from Ruiz-Primo and Shavelson [13] and Gareis [12], there are five elements of performance assessment that will be used to define the beliefs of the participants.The elements are: (1) learning objectives, (2) performance task, (3) response format, (4) prompt or instruction and (5) scoring system.

Findings
Learning Objective.It is a result statement that captures specifically what knowledge, skills, and attitude that should be achieved for the learners, while for the teachers, they should be able to demonstrate all of them in order to help the learners achieved the learning objectives.There are four big points that is used to define learning objectives, that are: a. Their assumptions about intended learning outcomes.The excerpt from T1 was used to represent the data because it covered the answers from all the participants."Learning objectives are the descriptions or the results of students learning behaviour based on the specific standards from certain competencies that are expected to be achieved after the teaching and learning process."b.The importance of intended learning outcomes T1 explained that learning objective was very important because it showed or helped the teachers to track the teaching and learning process.While T2 also stated almost the same statements with T1.Below is the interview result of T2 about learning objective."Learning objective is very important as the road map or guideline to find out the characteristics and indicators of students achievement and used to direct the teaching-learning and assessment process that is in accordance with the initiative plans."c.The way of determining intended learning outcomes.To represent the data about the participants way in determining the learning objective, T2's references is used as the excerpt in this point."There are three things that I used in determining the learning objectives and the goals of the three domains (KSA), that are main goal, students need and students context."  ISSN: 2089-9823 d.The way to know the achievement of intended learning outcomes."The way I know about the achievement of intended learning outcomes or learning objectives is through the score descriptions of each indicators in the rubric."Performance Task.It consists of problems that are targeting the students' knowledge and content as well as their ability in using these skills for reasoning and problem-solving.It also should reflect the real problems that appear in the real-world (authentic).The teachers have a big role in creating a task that can help their students to comprehend the materials they have learnt.There are six big points that are being highlighted in performance task, that are: a.The participants assumption about performance task.The excerpt below is the interview result of T2.
It is used to represent the data of this point because T1 explanation about it also similar with T2 statement."Performance task is independent activities in a continuous learning process which have a role to help the students deepen the materials by providing problems that require their skills and knowledge in its completion."b.Their ideal view about it.Both of the participants had similar ideal view about how performance task should be made and presented."I think that the ideal view about performance task is a problem that teaches students to be independent, requires their knowledge and skills in their completion, requires continuity and must be in accordance with their level of abilities."c.The way they determining the task.T1 stated that he used the intended knowledge, skill and attitude as his references in determining the task.While T2, he mentioned another aspects he used as the references, that were the objectives, time and the students needs."When I was determining the task, I thought about the students the learning objectives, the three domains (knowledge, skill, attitude), the time to finish the task and the students needs."d.Their way to ensure the authencity of the task, Their ways to ensure the authentic task is by reflecting on the students work world.e. Type of tasks they choose.For T1, he preferred to use investigating and and solving problems as his type of tasks to assess his students ability improvements.T2 explained that because of the students ability were ranging from mow to moderate, he only used understanding and creating type of task in order to maximalize the abilities of the students."There were four types of tasks which were given to the students, that were investigating, solving problems, understanding and creating."f.
Their way to ensure if the task is appropriate with the students level.The explanation of T1 about his way to ensure the appropriateness with the level of the students is used to represent the data for this point."The way I ensuring if the task is in line with the students competence level was by taking a look at the task type, its content, the solution needed to complete it, and the choice and use of words and phrases in speaking or writing, also the length of the selected texts, with the help of their experiences in teaching."Response-format.Different response-formats are appropriate in different situations which depend on content, learning domain, and risk of guessing.The purpose of assessment, the responsible, the learning objectives, the timing and the condition where the assessment take place also included as the considerations in choosing the response-format.To identify the participants beliefs about response-format, the researcher also has classified four big points that should be explored in order to find out their beliefs.The four points are: a. Their assumption about response-format.T1 assumption about response-format is used as the excerpt for this point."Response-format or template is student worksheet is used as a medium to analyze student results, which the form is based on the skills assessed, and are also used as students work records."b.The participants ideal view about it T1 stated that a response-formt should be based on the learning objectives, tasks and guiding the students in the assessment process.Completing T1 statement, T2 stated that it should reflect the needs of the students, objectives, students interests and from the teachers also."For a response-format or template, it should be oriented on learning and assessment objectives, students needs, teachers needs, students interests, tasks, and guiding the students to perform their knowledge and skills."c.
The way they determine the response-format."In determining the response-format or templates is by referencing on the objectives first, then they continued on students needs, material and task checking, skill, students interests and the last was responde-format or template."d.The way to ensure if the response-format is suitable with the students level."I relied on my logics and experiences by simplifying the languages and the format or templates in order to be easier to understand and attaching an example on the response-format or template to guide their students in doing the task, but it still can show the students ability improvement." ISSN: 2089-9823  Performance assessment: Teachers beliefs and practices in higher education (Lukluk Argita Munif)

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Prompt or instruction.Prompts are usualy used to help in teaching, reminding, and reinforcing students abilities in compiling tasks or practicing set of skills.It can also be for challenging the students in completing the tasks, but must be recognizable and easily interpreted by them.In order to find out the participants beliefs about prompts or instructions, there are five big points which are being highlighted to provide more data about it: a.The participants assumptions about prompts or instructions "Instruction or prompt is orders given to students to practice their knowledge and skills they have been learned through the task and has the role to guide and tell them what they should do and pay attention to when working on the given task."b.The importance of prompts or instructions.Both of the participants stated that instruction was really important to note by the instructors because it was about how instructors delivered the task to the students in order to avoid the pros and cons of when and after working on it.c.Their ideal view about it "Instructions should be delivered briefly and clearly in a complete format (the content of the task, time to do it, the compiling system, and the indicators that would be assessed) to avoid misunderstandings."d.The references they used in desgining prompts or instructions "The aspects used as my references in making the instructions were clarity, indicators / criteria, students level tasks and objectives."Both of them agreed that these aspects affect them in making instructions.e.The participants ways in ensuring its appropriateness with the level of the students."To ensure whether the instructions were in line or not with the students level abilities, I pay attention to the objectives, the length of the instructions and the choices of words I used."Scoring system.In performance assessment, the students were asked to perform a task based on a real world problem which is needed to demonstrate the skills and knowledge acquired.To know the participants beliefs about scoring system and the types of assessment they choose, there are six points that are being highlighted to provide more data about it, that are: a. Their assumption about scoring system "Scoring system in performance assessment is the process of instructors or teachers to assess the students ability in using their knowledge and skills they have acquired by using a rubrik that has been compiled based on the criteria that he wanted to achieve through the application of real-world problems."b.The participants ideal view about it "I think a scoring system should be objective and the format of the assessment used to assess the students improvement should be arranged based on the theory from the experts to maintain its validity, the students need and their ability levels."c.The format they used to assess their students.Both of the participants were using rubric as their assessment formats to know the improvement of their students abilities.d.The type of scoring system they used.Both of the participants were using analytic rubric score as their assessment types because the indicators consisting in this rubric helped him in finding the strengths and weaknesses of the students, also analyzing the conclusions to evaluate them by giving feedbacks.e.The participants way in creating the scoring system "When determining the rubrics, I first referred to the skills that was being assessed, found rubrics from the experts, then adjusted it based on the objectives, the students needs, their level abilities and the final result from the institution."f.
The way to ensure if it is suitable with the students level.Their ways in adapting the rubric was by adjusting the indicators and its depictions, and also adjusting the score of each indicators with the standard given from the institution that has been considered appropriate with the students level abilities.

Discussion
From the interview and observation results, all of the participants created their beliefs based on their assumptions about it and their experiences in handling the students which were also related with Woods [27] who describes belief has relations with assumption and knowledge.Their beliefs about performance assessment were in line with the theories proposed by Ruiz-Primo and Shavelson [13] and Gareis [12].In preparing the performance assessment process, they paid attention on the five important indicators of it, that are: learning objectives, performance task, response-format, prompt and, the most important, scoring system.Each of these indicators linked to each other to create an appropriate assessment to assess the students skills and knowledge.The participants beliefs about learning objectives were in line with Gareis [12] that it should be coherent with the task and materials, impactful to the students, and refer to the three domains (knowledge, skill, attitude).In practice, the participants used learning objective as a basic or road map in directing the assessment process because it already consisted the knowledge, skill and attitude they would assess.Main goal from the institution was used as one of the factors in deciding the three domains.This result was also relevant with the work of Ping Wang [24] that teachers beliefs and practices on the objective were shaped by the goals from the schools or institutions to create an appropriate assessment process.While through this research, it was found that not only the main goal from the institution, but also students need and their context also used as references in determining the objectives.
The participants beliefs about task also in accordance with Ruiz-Primo and Shavelson [13] and Gareis [12] that required the students to use knowledge and skills acquired to demonstrate through actions which reflected from the real activities (authentic).They also believed that authentic task was very useful to be practiced by using the students knowledge and skills.The research results of Mubarak [21] and Hammond and Snyder [28] work supported this research that performance task was able to outline the realistic context the content which are the same with the actual practices.In practice, the participants way in determining the task was in line with Herman, Aschbacher and Winters [17] who made a framework to construct a good task that may help to develop students knowledge and skills by referencing from the learning objectives, deciding the content and skills, and ensuring that the task is appropriate with the students abilities.
The type of task they used also the same as that proposed by Primo and Shavelson [13].The participants believed that when the students were given tasks that required solutions, it would make them used their knowledge and skills to improve their problem-solving abilities that can be applied in their future work place.In line with Chalhoub-Deville, the participants considered a task as an on-going process for their students which is needed to use their knowledge and experiences based on context and authenticity.They also believed that task was an independent activies in a continuous process.However, it was contrary to the result of research from Koh [29] that the main aim of doing this kinds of task is that it enables the students to learn by enganging in independent learning or working in teams of possible solutions in a suppportive environment.The task given to the students is not only about independent learning, but also learning in groups so that they are accustomed to it and can be practiced when they are in their work environment.
The findings about response-format used by the participants also in line with [13].They used response-format to collect the students work as their records to assess the students abilities in using their knowledge and skills.Through the interview and observation, the participants also let their students to use the response-format to answer the task based on their own knowledge and experiences they got after teaching and learning process.In addition to the theory, the researcher also found out that the participants used it as a template consisting an example to guide the students in answering the task.They stated that the abilities of the students which were categorized as middle to low became the reason in using response-format, not only as the answer sheet but also as the guidance for their students in order to develop every ability they have.In Indonesia, this statement was supported by Depdiknas [30] stating that students response-format can used as learning tools because it can help the teachers in carrying out the learning process and accompanying students learning.This decision-making was also based on their beliefs and experiences as teachers with the aim of being able to help their students.Gulikers, Bastiaens and Kirschner [31] in their work also stated that its format should contain the guidelines that can help the students in compiling the task.Its guidelines include the instructions, guidance and the task itself but in a form that is easy to understand in order to maximalize in developing students abilities.The participants way in considering the best response-format used by the students also in line with Gareis [12] who stated that it should be related to the intended objectives, the needs and level of the students.
The participants beliefs on prompt or instruction were a new discoveries in performance assessment research.They stated that prompt or instruction was very important in guiding the students to do the given task.Through interview and observation, not all of the tasks given required the students to directly collect their works results on the same day.Further, the participants explained that a clear prompt or instruction, in written or oral form, really help their students to build their perceptions on how they should do the task.The only theory that supported this findings is from Gareis [12].Prompt or instruction is used to direct the students in compiling the task and its clarity helps them to reduce systematic errors that may happen.In line with their beliefs, in practices, the participants paid attention on the length of instruction, their intonation and speed when delivering it.In some tasks, the instruction was in the form of scenario about cases that needed to be solved by the students.So, the role of the participants as the instructors was crucial because they have to arrange the instructions that were in accordance with the objectives and the ability of the students to avoid any misunderstandings.
The last indicators that they believed has an important role in performance assessment was scoring system or the way the participants assessed the students improvements.In line with Chang's work [23], the participants beliefs that assessment process was about assessing students abilities in integrating and using their knowledge and skills acquired to solve the problems given which reflected from the real life settings.They believed that the students should develop understanding by their own in order to master the information by integrating and using the knowledge they have got.The way they perceived how the assessment should be influenced the way they assessed the students.In practice, the participants really reflected the objectives and students need in choosing the best scoring system to assess their students improvement.They adjusted the rubric along with its criteria or indicators that was used with the needs and the abilities of the students also