an investigation of the efficacy of the language assessment course at state universities in developing prospective teachers’ language assessment literacy

Upon recognizing the significance of assessment literacy as a necessity for modern professional teachers, scholars have called for strongly-designed training programs. within this training-supportive perspective, the quality of assessment course has been examined from different angles. in line with this, the present research attempted to investigate whether language assessment course at the b.a. level at iranian state universities is helpful in raising prospective teachers' awareness of the essentials of assessment, with a reference to davies’ (2008) framework of language assessment literacy (lal) and current assessment standatds (e.g., jcsee, 2015). to collect the required data, a questionnaire, encompassing 83 likert items and a set of open-ended questions, was developed, and responses from 92 course instructors were collected. teaching and assessment practices of two course instructors were also observed throughout an educational semester. content analysis and descriptive statistical analysis (using spss 26) of the data revealed that the course mainly focused on knowledge and skills components, overlooking the principles of assessment. besides, lack of divergence in instructors’ teaching and assessment practices was observable, with the majority of the instructors adhering to traditional methods, showing no inclination to adopt innovative practices. lack of balanced attention to all core elements of lal, being theory-laden and disconnected from practice in assessment, use of dated teaching materials, large classes, and insufficient teaching hours were recognized as factors or inappropriate practices which might hinder the development of lal in the researched context. furthermore, implications of the study have been introduced through a set of key action which might be taken by policy makers/ university administrators and course instructors in order to reduce the obstacles in developing and maintaining lal within the iranian efl context.