Teachers’ Readiness and Practices in School-Based Assessment Implementation: Primary Education in Malaysia

Abstract

Recently, the Malaysia education system instigated a school-based assessment (SBA) for the primary educational level. SBA is an aggregate assessment of the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective features. The teacher’s role is a very important factor that will determine the success of the SBA practice. This study identifies the influence of primary school teachers' readiness in terms of knowledge, ability, facilities, and time adequacy given on their practices of SBA implementation in the teaching and learning (T&L) process. In this quantitative study, an electronic questionnaire was used to collect the data from 181 primary school teachers in Chemor, Perak, Malaysia. Multiple linear regression (MLR) analysis was used to describe the relationship between teachers' readiness and teachers’ practices. Besides, the independent t-test was used to identify the difference in teachers' practices of SBA among different gender and school area (urban and rural). The result found that there was a significant influence of teachers’ ability and time adequacy on teachers' practices in implementing SBA during T&L. Furthermore, the level of teachers’ practices SBA have no difference between different teachers’ gender and school area (urban and rural). This study offers an insight to the top management and policymakers in improving policy and encouraging teachers to efficiently implement SBA in the T&L process.