Authors: Andrew Ghaly
Abstract: Classroom-based assessment occupies a large share of an English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teacher’s working week, yet many teachers receive little structured preparation for it. This study surveyed 140 in-service EFL teachers, all graduates of English department teaching divisions in Egyptian public university faculties of education, using a 16-item questionnaire covering six domains of assessment literacy: understanding assessment purposes and principles, validity, reliability, and fairness, test and task design, scoring, rubrics, and standard setting, data interpretation and use of results, and professional and ethical practices. Each item was rated on a five-point scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The questionnaire also probed participants’ familiarity with emerging concepts such as smart assessment and AI-based evaluation, and their perceptions of whether their pre-service methodology courses had adequately prepared them in these areas. Overall self-reported assessment literacy was moderate (M = 3.03, SD = 1.31), with the highest mean ratings in understanding assessment purposes and principles (M = 3.30) and the lowest in data interpretation and use of results (M = 2.57). A large majority of participants reported that their faculties had not embedded sufficient assessment literacy training in the pre-service curriculum, and nearly all indicated that their methodology coursework had contained no instruction on using AI tools for test design or data analysis. Familiarity with smart assessment concepts was similarly low. Teachers who had completed formal assessment training scored markedly higher on every domain (all p < .001, with mean differences of roughly two scale points), and years of teaching experience was positively correlated with assessment literacy (r = .31 to .38, all p < .001). Teaching level — primary, secondary, adult education, or university — showed no significant relationship with any domain. The findings suggest that Egyptian faculties of education need to substantially revise pre-service assessment curricula to address both foundational assessment literacy and the growing demands of technology-enhanced and AI-assisted assessment.
