The case of st margaret’s girls’ college: How SLOA promotes self-assessment and peer assessment to enhance secondary school student English learning

Abstract

In meeting the challenges of globalization, education reform often targets assessment because it is “key to improving learning achievement” (UNESCO EFA Monitoring Report. The quality imperative. UNESCO, Paris, p. 158, 2005). The 3-year Self-directed Learning-Oriented Assessment Project (SLOA) aims at changing the assessment culture in Hong Kong by enhancing assessment literacy and practices. In recognizing the key role of teachers in quality education (Leu DJ, Kinzer CK, Coiro JL, Cammack DW. Toward a theory of new literacies emerging from the Internet and other information and communication technologies. In: Ruddlel RB, Unrau NJ (eds) Theoretical models and processes of reading, 5th ed. International Reading Association, Newark, pp. 1570-1613, 2004), site-based professional development serves as the cornerstone to engineer teachers’ behavior change and to impact on student achievement. This chapter takes a close look at how quality of English teaching and learning at one of the project partner schools was improved. Both quantitative and qualitative data are presented, and implications are discussed on student achievement and professional growth of the teachers.