Examining the Willingness of Turkish Teachers for Vocational Development in Educational Assessment in Terms of Different Variables

Abstract

The aim of this study is to reveal how many different groups Turkish teachers constitute according to their vocational development needs in educational assessment, willingness for development in this area, gender, age, experiences, and subject areas. In addition, it is aimed to examine how teachers’ willingness for vocational development vary for different teacher profiles that were defined based on their gender, age, experience, and subject areas. The subject pool included 1407 teachers teaching different subjects. The data was obtained from the answers given by the teachers to the Teacher Questionnaire of Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). The latent class analysis was performed with the Mplus 7.4 program to reveal how many groups teachers constitute according to their professional development need, willingness for the development, gender, age, experience, and subject areas. Results of the latent class analysis showed that teachers constitute two different classes. The probability of belonging to the first latent class is high for the male teachers older than 40 years old, having experience more than 20 years, not needing professional development, and not willing to attend in-service training in this area. Female teachers, younger than 40 years old, having experience less than 11 years need professional development in assessment, and they are also willing to attend more training in this area. Based on the results of the study, it was recommended to increase the number of in-service trainings especially for this teacher profile. The study revealed that Turkish teachers are not motivated and willing to develop their assessment skills. Researcher suggested examining possible reasons of low motivations among teachers to develop their assessment skills.