Understanding Assessment Processes for Communicative Competence through an Analysis of Teachers’ Reported Practice

education sciences Article Understanding Assessment Processes for Communicative Competence through an Analysis of Teachers’ Reported Practice Fernando Guzmán-Simón1,* , Juan Jesús Torres-Gordillo 2and Katia Caballero 3 1Department of Language Education, Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Sevilla, 41013 Sevilla, Spain 2Department of Educational Research Methods and Diagnostics, Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Sevilla, 41013 Sevilla, Spain; [email protected] 3Department of Didactics and School Organization, Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain; [email protected] *Correspondence: [email protected] Received: 26 March 2020; Accepted: 20 April 2020; Published: 22 April 2020   Abstract: This research addresses the types of assessment tasks, the assessment criteria, instruments and procedures of communicative competence used by primary school teachers in Andalusia. This multiple-case study drew on the experiences of teachers from four schools in the south of Spain. The data source has been the focus groups in which the teachers took part. The transcripts were analysed thematically by three researchers who devised a system of categories designed through an iterative process. The findings reveal the paucity of tasks used to assess reading, listening and oral expression. The study also shows the diverse problems faced by teachers when it comes to evaluating communicative competence. This paper highlights the need to rethink the curricular contents and the methods applied to assess communicative competence in primary schools. Keywords: primary education; communicative competence; assessment literacy; assessment for learning 1. Introduction The implementation of international assessment tests (Programme for International Student Assessment –PISA–, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study–TIMSS– and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study–PIRLS) led, by the end of the 90s, to the development of the Project of Definition and Selection of Competences (DeSeCo). Its aim was to provide a framework of nine competences to improve learning assessment. Some years later, the European Parliament and Council called on its member countries to develop lifelong learning strategies through incorporating eight key competences into Basic Education. Spain inserted the term basic competences for the first time in the Law of Education (2006) [ 1 ] and they were redefined in the Law of Improvement of Quality of Education (2013) [ 2 ]. Communicative competence was one of the basic competences, defined as the ability to identify, understand, express, create and interpret concepts, feelings, facts and opinions in both oral and written forms, using visual, sound/audio and digital materials across disciplines and contexts. It implies the ability to communicate and connect effectively with others in an appropriate and creative way [3]. There have been various definitions of communicative competence in the last few decades [ 4 – 10 ]. In 2001 the European Council developed the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages [ 11 ], aiming to generate an international reference document for the teaching, learning and assessment of communicative competence. This framework provides standards that, on the one hand, must be Educ. Sci. 2020,10, 116; doi:10.3390/educsci10040116 www.mdpi.com/journal/education Educ. Sci. 2020,10, 116 2 of 17 achieved at different stages of learning and, on the other hand, serve to assess the results in a comparable manner at an international level. It also details the competences required for the communication, knowledge and skills associated with those competences, the situations and domains of communication, as well as the levels of achievement in listening, reading, speaking and writing. The communicative competence may be understood as the development of listening, reading, speaking and writing through the interaction of different components, such as the linguistic (lexical, grammatical, semantic and phonological dimensions), the pragmatic-discursive (sociolinguistic and pragmatic suitability of the discourse to the different situation contexts), the socio-cultural (the discursive genre chosen in each communicative situation) and the strategic (integration of non-linguistic and multimodal components along with linguistic ones) [ 12 ]. The development of the communicative competence requires the acquisition of a meta-discursive awareness in children. According to the schemes proposed by Van Dijk and Kintsch [ 13 ] and Halliday [ 14 ] shown in Table 1, this metacognitive awareness described by Johns [ 15 ] and Rose and Martin [ 16 ] enables the further development and accurate use of different discourse levels by speakers, such as the textual microstructure [ 17 ], the textual macrostructure [18] and the genre [19,20]. Table 1. Relations between genre, textual structure and language levels. Textual Structure Language Levels Text Descriptor A. Genres A. Text Basic models of text building according to their field, tenor (to whom it is addressed) and mode (medium of release), configured by use through History. They have specific pragmatic, structural and linguistic conventions. B. Macrostructures B.1. Theme The topic and intentionality of the author summarised by the main idea of the discourse. B.2. Structures and stages The different parts of the text are interconnected, conforming a thematic progression. It allows the theme of the text to expand in subthemes, and the different narrative, descriptive or expositive sequences to progress. According to its genre, the text displays a structure enabling it to be identified as belonging to a particular genre. B.3. Cohesion The linguistic elements facilitating the global and lineal coherence of the oral and written text to be displayed. The linguistic tools that make it possible are: a. References; b. Substitutions; c. Ellipsis; d. Theme and rheme; e. Conjunction. C. Microstructures C.1. Clauses and sentences This level addresses the accuracy of the syntactic construction and its relation with the genre or textual sequence it belongs to. C.2. Words Lexical level addresses the words choice from a lexical-semantic perspective (paradigmatic axis). A detailed analysis of the process followed by those European countries integrating the competences into their curricula was carried out by Arjomand et al. [ 21 ], Gordon et al. [ 22 ] and Hal á sz and Michel [ 23 ]. In the case of Spain, the inclusion of communicative competence in the school curriculum has resulted in some imbalances between either, the curriculum design and the teaching and learning processes carried out by primary education teachers. These imbalances have their origin in the way in which the competences were introduced into the curriculum [ 24 – 27 ]. The key competences have not been incorporated as the central integrative curricular axis, but they have been just added to the existing curriculum. In this way, the purpose of the competences has not been to redesign the teaching and learning processes, but to meet the European guidelines. As a consequence Educ. Sci. 2020,10, 116 3 of 17 of this superficial fit, the subject areas and the assessment standards continue focused on the contents of school subjects and not on the competences [ 28 – 33 ]. The last Spanish educational law in 2013 [ 2 ] reduced the role of key competences even more, compared to the legislation of 2006 [ 1 ], conceiving them more as capacities than as features applicable to all disciplines [34]. Along with the scarce policies aiming for a full integration of the competences in the Spanish education system, the teachers’ training to develop and assess them becomes an added difficulty. Teachers either have little awareness of the available training in communicative competence or do not see it as valuable [ 35 , 36 ], especially in terms of how to assess it [ 37 ]. Teachers have little background in the techniques and instruments used to assess competences, and they state that they are not very motivated to carry out these tasks [ 38 ]. Furthermore, it has been found that trainee teachers do not learn how to embed the key competences in the school curriculum [39,40]. The assessment of communicative competence is currently one of the Spanish education system’s challenges. Numerous authors have put forward proposals to integrate assessment into curriculum design in general [ 41 – 49 ] and communicative competence in particular [ 50 – 52 ]. The improvement in the competences requires new assessment procedures, the development of more precise measurement techniques with more people involved in the assessment and a greater balance between what needs to be measured and what can be measured [ 53 ]. It is essential that this assessment is systematically connected with teaching [54], and becomes the driving force for educational improvement [55,56]. The importance of teachers’ initial training in teaching the key competences has been underlined by the EU High Level Group of Experts on Literacy [ 57 ], who point out that “Prospective teachers should be taught detailed subject-specific knowledge about literacy [ . . . ], general pedagogical skills [ . . . ], and a wide range of literacy-specific teaching strategies [ . . . ]; they should also be taught appropriate assessment techniques and how to diagnose and address reading problems” (p. 44). The process of implementing the key competences, in general, and communicative competence in particular, was initiated more than a decade ago. Some previous research, such as that by Ram í rez [ 35 ], Pepper [ 47 ] and Hal á sz and Michel [ 23 ], has noted the lack of evidence among the EU member states about three fundamental aspects: one, the systematic assessment of the results of the competences implementation process; two, the teachers’ training; and three, the role of the school inspector. Our research set out to review, from the teachers’ perspective, how educational practice relating to communicative competence is currently being implemented, starting with the following two questions: RQ1: What kind of assessment tasks related to communicative competence do children carry out in the classroom? RQ2: What criteria, instruments and assessment procedures of communicative competence do teachers use in the classroom to assess the children? 2. Method Our article addresses the research as a multiple-case study [ 58 ], with a descriptive and exploratory aim. To this end, a thematic analysis was carried out [ 59 , 60 ] thereby determining a series of choices concerning the research’s design and analysis. The first of these choices is an analysis from the critical realism perspective, as it adopts different valid perspectives concerning the same event [61]. 2.1. Participants Four primary schools in Andalusia (south Spain) took part in this case study. The schools were selected according to four criteria. The first criterion was the selection of schools set in urban centres but with different social contexts. The second was that the selected schools should include both public and private. A third criterion was that schools should show different levels of performance. Finally, the four schools should have between 250 and 500 children, and six to twelve teachers. Table 2shows the specific characteristics of each school. Educ. Sci. 2020,10, 116 4 of 17 Table 2. Characteristics of the participant schools. School Characteristics School 1 Low performing public school, whose families have low socio-economic status (SES) (250 students approximately and 6 teachers). School 2 Low performing public school, whose families have a medium to low SES (250 students approximately and 6 teachers). School 3 Middle-performing private school and a medium to low SES (500 students approximately and 12 teachers). School 4 Bilingual private school, whose families have a medium to high SES (500 students approximately and 12 teachers). The schools were deliberately chosen. Once they were informed about the aims of the research, they showed special interest in taking part in it. Apart from these four centres, another two schools were initially reached, although they finally refused to participate due to technical problems—the required internet connection—and their lack of time to pursue the teacher training period included in the research. All the participants in the research were adults, were informed about the nature of the study and the conditions of their participation. The participation was voluntary and followed the rules of informed consent. This investigation has gained approval from and adhered to the standards of the Social Sciences of the Ethical Committee of Experimentation of the University of Seville. 2.2. Data Analysis The data were gathered from focus groups [ 62 ] in which teachers from the participant, schools took part. These groups were audio recorded, and subsequently transcribed [ 63 ] and analysed using the Atlas-ti, version 6.2 software. The data analysis procedure set out from the elaboration of a coding system based on a theoretical construct [ 64 ], although different codes, which emerged during the analysis process, were also incorporated. Therefore, the final system of categories was the result of a hybrid system of deductive-inductive categories [65]. Oral discourse analysis requires a thorough reading of transcriptions, both thematic and content analysis [ 66 ]. The analysis unit chosen was the wording, given that oral communication does not always allow sentences to be clearly delimited. The coding system was designed through an iterative process in two repetitions, with the participation of three researchers. In each iteration, the agreement between the coders was calculated using Fleiss’s Kappa technique [ 67 ], with the aim of reducing the bias in the analyses. The calculations were done with SPSS software (version 24), applying the syntax of Fleiss’s Kappa MKAPPASC.SPS designed by David Nichols in 1997. The categories and their indicators were numbered in order to speed the coding process, and to facilitate the subsequent data entry in SPSS. Each researcher coded the sentences assigning a number according to the identified indicator. In the data matrix generated for the analyses there were three columns—one for each researcher—and as many rows as codings. Thus, each row captured the numbers (indicators) assigned by each researcher to every single coding. Process coding started with an initial coding of focus group 1, for which the consistency of agreement between coders was calculated. The calculated value that did not surpass 0.50 was interpreted as fair [ 67 ] or moderate [ 68 ]. As a result, the coding system was re-elaborated, and the first focus group was recoded until a fine degree of agreement according to Fleiss [ 67 ] and Altman [ 68 ] was obtained (see Table 3). Thereafter, the same coding system was applied to the remaining three focus groups, obtaining an agreement (K >0.94) at a level that may be considered very good [ 68 ] or excellent [67]. Educ. Sci. 2020,10, 116 5 of 17 Table 3. Calculation of Kappa. Kappa (K) ASE Z-Value P-Value Focus group 1 0.64756494 0.01273862 50.83477236 0.000000 Focus group 2 0.95541310 0.00874654 109.2332684 0.000000 Focus group 3 0.96526280 0.01459900 66.11843498 0.000000 Focus group 4 0.94163954 0.00793460 118.6751267 0.000000 K=Kappa value; ASE =asymptotic standard error; Z =standardised values; P-value =significance 2-tailed. The final coding system consisted of five categories, shown in Table 4, along with their respective indicators (see Table 4). Table 4. The system of categories of communicative competence for the speaking, listening, reading and writing dimensions. Category Indicator Description Syllabus Syllabus Types of syllabus and elements, which incorporate communicative competence (oral and written expression and comprehension). Methodological principles and strategies Methodological principles and didactic strategies, which improve communicative competence (oral and written expression and comprehension). Tasks and activities Types of classroom tasks Tasks and activities are carried out to develop competence in the children’s oral and written communication. Resources required School resources used for the development of oral and written communication (school materials required). Types of classroom tasks (other curricular areas) Tasks and activities for oral and written communication in other curricular areas. Assessment Criteria and indicators of assessment Indicators of assessment pointed out by the teachers when doing the assessment of a task aimed to improve linguistic communication. Assessment instruments Instruments used by teachers to assess oral and written communication. Assessment procedures Oral and written communication in the classroom. Difficulties Teaching difficulties Difficulties in the teaching and learning process of oral and written communication. Assessment difficulties Difficulties in assessment of oral and written communication. Family environment Learning difficulties Influence of the families in the development of communicative competence. Learning cooperation Tasks carried out by families to improve communicative competence. Teaching collaboration Teaching collaboration for the development of communicative competence. 3. Findings and Discussion The findings have been structured with reference to the two main research questions, centred on the types of tasks and the assessment of communicative competence. Each of these includes, firstly, a descriptive analysis based on the frequencies of the codes generated in the system of categories and, secondly, a content analysis of the focus group transcripts. The analysis of the prevalence of codes (see Table 5) enables us to construct numerous statements concerning the practices of the teachers in the classroom. Table 5shows all the codings performed, both for each code and for each school (S. 1, S. 2, S. 3 and S. 4). The percentages highlighted in grey are the most remarkable data for our research, taking Educ. Sci. 2020,10, 116 6 of 17 every school into account. The interpretation of these results is unpacked below, giving response to the research questions of our study. 3.1. RQ 1: What Kinds of Assessment Tasks Related with the Communicative Competence Do the Children Carry out in the Classroom? 3.1.1. Writing Tasks The descriptive analysis based on the categories’ frequencies demonstrates a common profile of the practices applied by teachers in the teaching and learning process. In particular, the most frequent types of tasks are related to writing. The most prevalent types of writing tasks in the classroom are copying, handwritten work and dictations (“In their notebook, they write the title of the text, they copy it . . . and also, very often, they retain the accents” [School 2]). These tasks are connected with the development of writing skills focused on formal aspects, spelling and the grapheme-phoneme relation of writing in their mother tongue. Likewise, teachers describe a writing model based on the “knowledge telling” [ 69 ], where students do not create new thinking (which would require them to “express it in their own words” [School 2]), but literally copy or elaborate information from other sources (“I force them to handwrite it, so it’s not printed, and then they elaborate a little, and when they do it using slides, a presentation, then they do work that involves more synthesis, both reading and synthesising the ideas” [School 1]). The development of communicative competence remains, as they had underlined Rose and Martin [ 16 ] and Donahue and Lillis [ 70 ], focused on the area of writing, since the students’ tasks do not encourage the development of the textual macrostructure and the genre. The teachers’ writing strategies do not offer the opportunity to develop the complete writing process. Instead, they rely on the fulfilment of a task, but do not approach the meta-discursive background needed to carry it out. The teachers’ concern about writing is oriented towards formal aspects such as spelling (“[he or she] does the readings, does the dictations, and I focus on what would be perhaps more the syllabus of spelling rules . . . ” [School 2]; “I say, for instance, work on the grammar, the spelling rules” [School 3]), punctuation marks and formal aspects of the written discourse: In the writing and creation of written texts ( . . . ) they tend not to use many punctuation marks. As to spelling, they also make some spelling mistakes. Especially the accents. We work on this by copying, through dictations and by emphasising it a lot. (School 2) The abundance and diversity of writing tasks contrasts with the lack of tasks related to reading, speaking and listening. The prevalence of written tasks is 1.5 times the tasks related to oral communication (see Table 5). In fact, the teachers demand writing tasks from their students even when they are dealing with the reading, speaking and listening dimensions. The tasks proposed by these teachers are connected in one way or another with writing. As a result, there are few tasks to specifically develop reading, oral expression and comprehension skills. Writing tasks rarely encourage the development of macrostructure skills or genre awareness (“they have a diary and they take it home, for instance, my favourite animal, then they have to draw their favourite animal, what its name is, and they present it in front of their colleagues” [School 1]). The mixture of written and oral communication does not allow for feedback aimed at improving writing in a specific genre. When this type of task is performed, it is decontextualised, thus not addressing real communicative needs, and not reflecting on the situational or cultural context. To sum up, it excludes from learning those elements which conform to the sociocultural learning of genres [ 71 ], focusing more on the cognitive process (“in each unit we work on a text; we are currently working on notices, then we’ll work on what a note is, what a description is, that’s it, we spend 15 days doing descriptions of people” [School 3]). Educ. Sci. 2020,10, 116 7 of 17 Table 5. Frequencies and total percentages of the categories by school. Competences Category Indicator Cases S. 1 % S. 2 % S. 3 % S. 4 % Total Oral communication (speaking and listening) Syllabus Syllabus 7 35.0 7 35.0 6 30.0 0 00.0 20 Methodological principles and strategies 8 25.8 12 38.7 7 22.6 4 12.9 31 Tasks and activities Types of classroom tasks 12 38.7 8 25.8 4 12.9 7 22.6 31 Resources required 6 33.3 4 22.2 8 44.4 0 00.0 18 Types of classroom tasks (other curricular areas) 5 27.8 3 16.7 9 50.0 1 5.6 18 Assessment Criteria and indicators of assessment 7 43.7 0 00.0 4 25.0 5 31.3 16 Assessment instruments 4 57.1 0 00.0 3 42.9 0 00.0 7 Assessment procedures 11 42.3 5 19.2 7 26.9 3 11.5 26 Difficulties Teaching difficulties 8 22.9 15 42.9 9 25.7 3 8.6 35 Assessment difficulties 3 100 0 00.0 0 00.0 0 00.0 3 Written communication (Reading) Syllabus Syllabus 4 16.7 11 45.8 8 33.3 1 4.2 24 Methodological principles and strategies 4 10.0 11 27.5 14 35.0 11 27.5 40 Tasks and activities Types of classroom tasks 9 20.9 16 37.2 8 18.6 10 23.3 43 Resources required 7 23.3 13 43.3 9 30.0 1 3.3 30 Types of classroom tasks (other curricular areas) 3 17.6 3 17.6 10 58.8 1 6.0 17 Assessment Criteria and indicators of assessment 4 30.8 0 00.0 6 46.1 3 23.1 13 Assessment instruments 0 00.0 0 00.0 4 100 0 00.0 4 Assessment procedures 0 00.0 7 46.7 8 53.3 0 00.0 15 Difficulties Teaching difficulties 5 11.9 15 35.7 16 38.1 6 14.3 42 Assessment difficulties 0 00.0 0 00.0 0 00.0 0 00.0 0 Educ. Sci. 2020,10, 116 8 of 17 Table 5. Cont. Competences Category Indicator Cases S. 1 % S. 2 % S. 3 % S. 4 % Total Written communication (writing) Syllabus Syllabus 4 18.2 7 31.8 9 40.9 2 9.1 22 Methodological principles and strategies 3 10.7 11 39.3 10 35.7 4 14.3 28 Tasks and activities Types of class tasks 10 22.2 12 26.7 15 33.3 8 17.8 45 Resources required 3 20.0 4 26.7 7 46.7 1 6.6 15 Types of classroom tasks (other curricular areas) 3 13.6 2 9.1 12 54.6 5 22.7 22 Assessment Criteria and indicators of assessment 6 22.2 3 11.1 6 22.2 12 44.4 27 Assessment instruments 4 36.4 1 9.1 4 36.4 2 18.2 11 Assessment procedures 4 13.3 15 50.0 9 30.0 2 6.7 30 Difficulties Teaching difficulties 9 25.0 16 44.5 8 22.2 3 8.3 36 Assessment difficulties 1 33.3 0 00.0 0 00.0 2 66.7 3 Family environment and school organisation Family environment Learning difficulties 0 00.0 6 37.5 6 37.5 4 25.0 16 Learning cooperation 0 00.0 2 20.0 7 70.0 1 10.0 10 Teaching coordination 3 13.6 17 77.3 2 9.1 0 00.0 22 Educ. Sci. 2020,10, 116 9 of 17 Teachers design tasks mainly for the purpose of the development of textual cohesion and coherence (macrostructure). As Rose [ 72 ] had pointed out, the classroom tasks are not oriented towards the improvement of textual structure, its adequacy for the genre and the communicative situation, and the development of self-regulation when writing that require metacognitive ability. The limited emphasis is illustrated here: That everything is coherent, that they use appropriate words. ( . . . ) That they write it, that it’s well written, that it has its parts (its beginning, its denouement . . . ). For them, to be a bit more autonomous. (School 2) Exceptionally, teachers make use of scaffolding for the development of textual structure as recommended by Martin [ 73 ]. There is an example in the focus groups related to the narrative text (“Keeping the parts of the beginning, the hub and the denouement. ( . . . ) And with the parts very structured, they know what they have to do. That’s to say, it isn’t ‘I write to write’” [School 4]) and the expository text (“they know it and they associate it, and they know where they have to go, it’s with the conceptual maps we do. For example, a conceptual map for the description of objects” [School 3]). These tasks enable the development of the textual macrostructure and genre awareness. Nevertheless, the use of scaffolding tends to predominate in tasks oriented to narrative and descriptive texts: ( . . . ) I’ve always tried to do a literary creation workshop ( . . . ) and I try to do it from inconclusive texts, which they add an end to, from giving them a structure about a story ( . . . ) so based on a model which has been accepted in general quite well, they create one imitating it. (School 1) In summary, the classroom tasks encourage reading, but without the development of the textual macrostructure. Our results show the difficulties faced in the classrooms when teachers deal with the improvement of textual cohesion and coherence (“we, in second grade, we’ve realised that it’s hard for them to write, for example, when doing a summary. It’s very hard for them, the written expression, not to get lost. Then, we try to get it to be more structured” [School 4]). 3.1.2. Reading Tasks The participant schools show a greater frequency in the codes which refer to the difficulties of teaching of communicative competence in the classroom, highlighting reading as the most difficult skill. The improvement of reading presents numerous difficulties for the primary school teachers, as the reading tasks do not address the development of specific skills. These tasks are seldom specific, and are mainly related to reading comprehension (“at the beginning of each learning unit, there’s a page of [written] activities of comprehensive reading.” [School 4]). In general, they are not very specific, and are connected with open answer activities in a notebook. When specific tasks about reading are tackled, they usually consist of activities of control, speed and oral reading accuracy, but they do not focus on the improvement of reading comprehension or the development of self-regulation of reading (“[ . . . ] one day a week, which is Thursday, [ . . . ] I practise with them speed reading. I take my mobile and I time them, and they’re enthusiastic about seeing who reads best of all” [School 2]). In fact, the reading tasks tend to be oriented to the completion of reading comprehension worksheets. Consequently, reading tasks do not develop reading self-regulation or strategies to favour reading comprehension: Once we’ve read a chapter, then we start to work with the notebook in class. 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