ANALYZING CONTEXTUAL AND EXPERIENTIAL FACTORS IN ASSESSMENT PRACTICES: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF INDONESIAN EFL TEACHERS

This research article aimed to explore contextual and experiential factors which influence assessment practices. The participants in this study were three Indonesian secondary-level EFL teachers. They were David, Rose, and Kevin (pseudonyms). This study investigated the contextual and experiential factors which had affected the teachers’ assessment practices, and analyzed the relationships between both factors in the teachers’ assessment practices. The research methods used were semi-structured retrospective interviews. The findings revealed two main points. First, the contextual factors which dominantly influenced the teachers’ assessment practices were related to educational polices and institutional mandates. In terms of the experiential factors, two things had affected the teachers’ assessment practices, called assessment development and assessment use. Second, the relationship between both factors was clearly emerged in the teachers’ self-reflections during interviews. In this case, the impact of contextual factors was actually mediated through experiential factors. The pedagogical implications of this study were to provide insight to EFL teachers into what contextual and experiential factors had affected their assessment practices, and to inform EFL teachers with some suggestions to carry out constant self-reflections on assessment experiences to develop assessment knowledge and skills.