the application of learning-oriented assessment for the learners with special needs: teachers’ perspectives

During the last decade, there has been a shift from traditional classroom-based assessment to learning-oriented assessment (loa). unlike the traditional approaches, loa gives primacy to learning and endeavors to engage the learners in the process of assessment by providing sufficient feedback from the self, peers, and teachers (carless, 2015). it is unquestionably vivid that teachers of learners with special needs are required to employ innovative approaches to assess learners, specifically those who study english as a foreign language. the purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the teachers’ perception and their implementation of loa. to this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine teachers with at least two years of experience in teaching english to learners with special needs. the interviews were transcribed and coded based on the grounded theory using maxqda software. as a result, three main themes, namely teachers’ perceptions, practical assessment implementation, and knowledge gap were identified. the findings indicated that teachers, on the whole, had low perceptions of novel approaches to assessment, and they barely paid heed to provide opportunities for the learners to have self and peer feedback. also, it was revealed that traditional summative assessment techniques without any forms of formative and performance assessment still overshadow the classes of learners with special needs. what also emerged from the interviews was teachers’ confessions that there was a need for receiving training and professional development courses to cultivate their assessment literacy. it can be deduced from the interviews that holding professional development courses to equip the teachers with assessment initiatives might be a remedy to compensate for the implementation of traditional summative assessment.