Dra. Ortiz-Navarrete, Mabel

This exploratory case study investigates the emotional responses, professional accountability, and action-taking dispositions of 150 Chilean prospective English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers towards language assessment scenarios. Despite the growing interest in assessment, little research has focused on the affective experiences of trainee teachers. Participants completed the Emotionally Loaded Situations Questionnaire, which assessed their reactions to situations where students fail language assessments. The study reveals that these situations elicited negative emotional responses, leading to a diminished sense of teacher identity due to perceived inefficiencies in teaching and assessment practices. The findings also highlight the teachers’ dispositions towards taking corrective actions, such as revisiting teaching and assessment strategies, reinforcing assessment content, and improving future practices. As to professional accountability, trainee teachers acknowledge that their teaching performance has a direct effect on their students’ assessment results. These outcomes emphasize the need for further research on the affective dimension in language assessment to better support the professional development of future teachers.

The general objective of this study is to analyze the types of items designed by Chilean pre-service EFL teachers to assess listening comprehension skills in English and the cognitive load they experience during the test design process. This study employs a mixed-method design, including 125 Chilean pre-service teachers of English in their third, fourth, and fifth year of professional preparation. As data collection techniques, the participants created a listening comprehension test for secondary education English language learners. Moreover, they completed the Cognitive Load Scale (Leppink et al., 2013). The findings indicate that all pre-service EFL teachers create close and open-ended questions to evaluate students' listening comprehension, focusing on identifying specific information. Fourth and fifth-year pre-service teachers design close and open-ended questions to identify general and specific information, encompassing higher levels of comprehension. On the other hand, regarding the cognitive load experienced by the participants in the test design, they exhibited moderate intrinsic cognitive load, demonstrating that the task was reasonably challenging. The extraneous load was generally low, suggesting minimal external distractions. Notably, the germane load was high across all groups, indicating that the task effectively promoted learning and competency development. Pre-service language teacher education programs should consider these findings to enhance listening assessment practices. Incorporating cognitive load theory can assist teacher candidates in building both pedagogical and disciplinary teaching competencies.

The study analyses the assessment instruments designed by Chilean English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in-service teachers. The participants were 110 secondary school teachers from the central, northern, and southern areas of Chile. The data collection technique was document analysis of the assessment instruments designed in their teaching practices. The results suggest that the most typical instrument is a language test, while speaking/writing performance evaluations with rubrics and rating scales are used to a lesser degree, and all having writing, reading, grammar, and vocabulary as their primary assessment foci. It is suggested that universities and administrators of educational institutions promote opportunities for professional updating regarding language assessment. Moreover, pre-service teacher education needs to emphasize and strengthen this didactic dimension.