Portuguese university students' conceptions of assessment: taking responsibility for achievement

Portuguese university students’conceptions of assessment: taking responsibility for achievement Maria Assunção Flores 1 &Gavin Brown 2 &Diana Pereira 1 &Clara Coutinho 1 & Patrícia Santos 1 &Cláudia Pinheiro 1 #Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract After 20 years of the Bologna Declaration, Portuguese universities claim to be implementing student-centred and involved assessment practices. Student conceptions of assessment matter when innovations and reforms in assessment practices are being implemented. This study is part of a larger research project entitled BAssessment in higher education: the potential of alternative methods^funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Government Funding Agency) (PTDC/MHCCED/2703/2014). This paper surveys a large sample (N= 5549) of Portuguese students in five public universities with a Portuguese version of the Students Conceptions of Assessment (SCoA-VI) inventory, previously validated in Brazil. Confirmatory factor analysis recovered the eight SCoA factors reported in the Brazilian context. Differences in mean score for the eight factors were trivial for institutional and student factors. Overall, students agreed that assessment for student improvement was not ignored. Scale inter-correlations revealed interesting inverse relations between improvement and irrelevance functions. Keywords Conceptionsofassessment.Highereducation.Students’conceptions.Improvement. Accountability Introduction Assessment in higher education summatively evaluates and credentials student learning and, ideally, formatively supports improved learning. The influence of assessment on students’ learning and performance is profound (Biggs 2003; Boud and Falchikov 2007; Brown and Knight 1994; Brown et al. 1997; Gulikers et al. 2008). Learning for a summative test or https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00415-2 *Maria Assunção Flores [email protected] 1 Research Centre on Child Studies (CIEC), Institute of Education, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal 2 Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand Higher Education (2020) 79:377–394 Published online: 1 June 2019 4 qualification, however, is often seen as less than ideal because of its lack of emphasis on learning (Black and Wiliam 1998; Dochy and McDowell 1997; Myers and Myers 2015; Webber 2012). Higher education institutions are globally seeking to prioritise positive effects and benefits for learning through reformed assessment processes (e.g. rubrics, transparency, feedback, authenticity) and the use of innovative assessment practices (e.g. portfolios, self and peer assessment, simulation) (Struyven and Devesa 2016; Struyven et al. 2005). The conceptions students have of those functions, including the value they give to each function, matter to the quality of their learning outcomes (McMillan 2016). Awareness of student beliefs especially matters when institutional policies and practices are reformed, partly because students tend to resist innovations in the mechanisms used to judge, evaluate, or certify their achievements (Struyven and Devesa 2016). As universities seek to innovate in their assessment regimes, it is important that students believe such assessments contribute to improved outcomes. Rejection of evaluative practices as irrelevant, inaccurate, or invalid would probably undermine the constructive goal of using assessment for learning. Hence, this paper extends the growing body of research into student conceptions of assessment by surveying a large sample of Portuguese university students with a recognised research tool (i.e. Student Conceptions of Assessment (SCoA) inventory; Brown 2008). Beyond validating that tool in a new context, the study explicitly tests the impact of relevant student and institutional factors upon the stability of results and differences in mean scores. Students’conceptions of assessment in higher education According to Segers and Tillema (2011, p. 53), Bstudying conceptions of assessment is of utmost relevance at a time when innovation of assessment practices is on the educational agenda^. Students’conceptions of assessment have been shown to relate significantly to academic performance, partly because of their contribution to self-regulation of learning (Brown 2011). Endorsement of assessment as a tool for improvement appears to be a constructive self-regulating belief leading to higher academic performance because self-regulation requires reflection upon achieved performance to identify learning priorities and successes. Gulikers et al. (2008) also found that students who perceived assessment as more authentic studied harder and developed more professional skills. In contrast, endorsement that assessment is irrelevant and ignorable leads to maladaptive responses (e.g. attribution to external locus of control) and rejection of the legitimacy of either the evaluative process, results, or feedback. Students’conceptions and beliefs about assessment may influence their motivation and the process of self-regulated learning (Pereira 2016; Zimmerman 2008) because of the overlap between such ideas and self-regulation of learning (Brown 2011). According to Novak and Johnson (2012), emotions are directly linked to cognition and there is a strong correlation between affect and learning. Those conceptions lead to different reactions and feelings before, during, and after assessment (Boud 1995;McMillan2016;Race1995). Research also shows that students experienced both positive and negative emotions in higher education contexts (Novak and Johnson 2012). In addition, recent studies on assessment feedback reveal that emotional reactions may determine how students will perform regarding the feedback received (Pitt and Norton 2017; Ryan and Henderson 2018). In contrast, an intensive longitudinal study of student emotional responses through a summative assessment found that only when scores were known (i.e. feedback was received) did student emotions have systematic relations with performance (Peterson et al. 2015). Higher Education (2020) 79:377–394 378 Much of the empirical work on conceptions of assessment has focused on compulsory education students and how these conceptions affect students’study behaviours and outcomes (Brown 2011,2013;BrownandHarris2012; Brown and Hirschfeld 2008; Brown et al. 2009b; Chen and Brown 2018; Otunuku et al. 2013; Peterson and Irving 2008; Solomonidou and Michaelides 2017). Segers and Tillema (2011) found gaps in research regarding how the conceptions of assessment influence students’learning and teachers’approaches to teaching in different assessment systems. Furthermore, according to Solomonidou and Michaelides (2017), although there is research evidence on students’conceptions regarding school improvement and evaluation of teaching, students’conceptions of their own assessment continue to be an under-researched area. While some research with higher education students does exist (Brown 2013; Brown et al. 2014; Brown and Wang 2013,2016;Fletcheretal.2012; Landim et al. 2015; Matos et al. 2009,2013;WangandBrown2014), much less has been conducted in Portugal. In the Portuguese context, research on assessment in higher education is still scarce. Flores and colleagues (Flores et al. 2015; Pereira et al. 2017a,b) found that written tests were the most used assessment methods and were associated with surface approaches to learning. Furthermore, the ideas which students associated most with assessment were linked to the kinds of assessment methods used by the teachers and were dependent on the programmes in which students are enrolled (Pereira et al. 2017a,b). Students perceived assessment as more effective and fairer when learner-centred assessment methods were used rather than only traditional assessment methods with implications for student learning processes and connections to their professional world (Flores et al. 2015; Pereira et al. 2017a). Learner-centred methods include, for instance, portfolios and project-based assessments, and Bactivities such as multiple drafts of written work that provides progressive feedback, oral presentations, student evaluations of each other’s work and group and team projects that require interactions^ (Webber (2012 p. 201). In general, students associated most frequently neutral ideas (such as tests or examinations and grades) with assessment but also positive ideas (e.g. learning), while negative ideas (e.g. unfairness and fear) were least frequent. However, the idea of conflict was identified by undergraduate students who were assessed most frequently through so-called learner-centred methods of assessment such as project-based work and portfolios (Flores et al. 2015). However, differences among different programmes were found; for example, students enrolled in the programmes of Social Sciences and Humanities associated more positive ideas to assessment than students from other programmes (Flores et al. 2015). Similar results were found by Fernandes and colleagues who conducted comparative studies of assessment in higher education in Portugal and Brazil (Fernandes 2014,2015; Barreira et al. 2017). These studies revealed that university students perceived assessment as being essentially summative. However, traditional assessment methods (exams/tests) were not seen by the students as the best way of knowing what students learn and what they are capable of doing. In addition, students considered that, although assessment practices were continuous throughout the semester, there was little involvement in student-involved selfand peer assessment (Fernandes 2015;Barreiraetal.2017). Although the assessment system in Portugal is consistent with research-based recommendations and recognises the fact that formative assessment promotes students’educational success, in many Portuguese educational settings, assessment is more oriented towards grading and ranking pupils’achievements rather than on helping them to learn (Fernandes 2009). Higher Education (2020) 79:377–394379 The same emphasis on traditional methods of assessment is reported in Brazil (De Oliveira and Flores 2017). Undergraduate students state that written tests are the most common assessment methods and that grades usually have no feedback from the instructors. In a similar vein, Pereira et al. (2016b) showed that students perceive feedback as more relevant and effective when students are assessed through learner-centred methods rather than by traditional ones. In another study, comparing students’perceptions about assessment in Portugal and Sweden found similar views although student modes of assessment (i.e. selfand peer assessment) were less used by Swedish students (Pereira et al. 2017b). Likewise, although there is a large variation in assessment practices between universities and disciplines within neighbouring Spain, the use of traditional examination practices was widespread (Panadero et al. 2018). Thus, it could be expected that specific context factors could impinge upon student conceptions in Portugal. A review of Brazilian research into higher education student perspectives on assessment (Matos et al. 2009) showed that two dimensions (i.e. formality of assessment method and locus of control) were able to summarise the variation in student thinking. Ultimately, assessment was perceived as formal test-like practices under the control of teachers, rather than students. Even peerand self-assessment practices were directed by teachers, not students themselves. A large scale survey of public and private university students in Minas Gerais state in Brazil (Matos et al. 2012) found that students had a wide range of conceptions but their dominant conception was a negative emotional reaction (irrelevance) with respect to student accountability. In comparing Brazilian and New Zealand university students, Matos and Brown (2015) concluded that Brazilian students had a more negative conception of assessment, speculating that the largely summative use of assessment in higher education was responsible. Using a Bdraw-a-picture^ technique with categorical analysis taken from Brown and Wang (2013), 60% of Brazilian university students’pictures of assessment were dominated by just two themes (i.e. negative emotions and portrayal of assessment as imprecise or inaccurate) (Landim et al. 2015). Hence, independent of data collection method (i.e. document analysis, factor-analysed survey, or free response drawing), the same message appears—assessment is formal and negatively experienced. Previous research among New Zealand secondary students with Brown’s SCoA version 2 inventory reported invariance in responding to the factors according to student sex, year of study, and ethnic group (Hirschfeld and Brown 2009). Reanalysis of the same data found that differences in interest and self-efficacy in reading had no statistically significant effect on how conceptions of assessment related to achievement (Brown and Walton 2017). In contrast, jurisdictional differences in factor means and inter-correlations were observed for the responses of Brazilian university students compared with New Zealand, Hong Kong, and China students on the 6th version of the SCoA inventory (Brown 2013). Furthermore, there were statistically and practically significant differences in SCoA factor means around attendance and effort given on a computer-based low-stakes test at one American university (Wise and Cotten 2009). This suggests demographic and psychological factors within a jurisdiction may properly play little effect on how students respond to the SCoA inventory; however, contextually defined assessment practices may elicit different responses. Hence, an important goal for this Portuguese study was to establish the nature of their responses to the SCoA and discover whether there were demographic factors that influenced responses. This review reveals a relative lack of insight into university students’perceptions or conceptions of assessment globally let alone in Portugal. As Brown et al. (2009a,p.9) recognise, Bexamining students’attitudes towards assessment purposes may help us uncover important factors in what students do before, during, and after assessment^. Higher Education (2020) 79:377–394 380 The Portuguese context Portuguese higher education includes both universities and polytechnics. Universities offer solid scientific training, gathering the efforts and competences of teaching and research units, while polytechnics focus on vocational and advanced technical training for the labour market. The Portuguese higher education system includes public higher education, composed of State institutions and foundations, and private higher education, consisting of institutions belonging to private entities and cooperatives (Eurydyce). 1 In Portugal, there are Bclassical^universities (e.g. University of Lisbon, University of Porto, and University of Coimbra) and the so-called new universities which were founded in the early 1970s, (e.g. University of Minho, University of Aveiro, University of Beira Interior, University of Algarve, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, and University of Azores). Access to higher education in Portugal is gained by national exams at the end of secondary education. In addition to completing a secondary education programme or having a legally equivalent qualification, students must obtain on the entrance examinations established for their intended programme, a classification equal to or higher than the minimum required classification (Decree-law n.° 90/2008). In competitive programmes, for example Medicine and a number of Engineering degrees, the required entry marks are very high (18 or more out of 20). According to the latest official statistics (Direcção Geral de Estatísticas da Educação e Ciência 2017) 361,943 students were enrolled in higher education in all study cycles in 2017, with 65% in university and 35% in polytechnics. More than four-fifths (83.6%) of the university students were enrolled in public higher education and 16.4% in private higher education. 2 In public higher education, students have to pay a tuition fee. The amount of tuition is fixed according to the nature of the programmes and their quality, with a minimum value corresponding to 1.3 of the national minimum salary. 3 Portugal has adopted the Bologna Process (Bologna Declaration 1999) which has shaped higher education landscape in the light of its principles and goals within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The resulting system provides degrees of comparable value in order to promote mobility, employability, quality assurance, and the development of life-long learning (European Commission 2006). Relevant to this study, Decree-law no. 42/2005 stipulates that training be centred on the competencies to be developed by the students, and the centrality of the student in his/her process of training and learning. Students are expected to engage in project-led work, individual study, assessment, and other activities focused on artistic, sociocultural, and sports dimensions. The pace and priorities of the reforms consistent with the Bologna process vary from country to country (Pereira et al. 2016a). In Portugal, both public and private universities are required to report on their implementation of the Bologna Process. Institutions reported on changes in the teaching and learning process, based on a student-centred learning that promotes autonomous work and student coresponsibility for learning (see reports on the implementation of the Bologna process). Given that assessments are used to select students for entry to university and that universities are expected to implement formative approaches to assessment, or at least to use diverse forms of assessment along with active methodologies in teaching in the light of the Bologna framework, 1 https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-policies/eurydice/content/first-cycle-programmes-60_en 2 http://www.dgeec.mec.pt/np4/estatglobal/%7B$clientServletPath%7D/?newsId=308&fileName=DGEEC_ DSEE_DEES_2018_EEF_2017_Principais.pdf 3 https://www.dges.gov.pt/pt/pagina/propinas Higher Education (2020) 79:377–394381 we expect students’conceptions of assessment to endorse the formative purposes, but not reject the summative uses of assessment. This appears to suggest that we expect students to illogically endorse inconsistent conceptions; instead, we suggest that student conceptions of assessment will be ecologically rational (Rieskamp and Reimer 2007). In other words, because assessments fulfil these two different functions with important consequences for students (i.e. improved learning outcomes and certification or selection), we expect students to endorse both purposes. Nevertheless, in light of the assessment for learning and Bologna processes, we do anticipate that the formative purposes of assessment will be endorsed more than the summative ones. Method The study This study is part of a larger research project BAssessment in higher education: the potential of alternative methods^funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Government Funding Agency) (PTDC/MHCCED/2703/2014) and co-financed by European Regional Development Funds (FEDER), Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Program (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007562). This broader research project has a strong empirical component in order to identify and analyse assessment practices in five Portuguese public universities from the point of view of both university teachers and students. However, this paper aims (1) to look at students’conceptions of assessment in the same five Portuguese public universities and (2) evaluate student and institutional factors impinging upon how Portuguese students respond to the questionnaire BStudents Conceptions of Assessment – version VI^inventory (Brown 2008). Procedures In accordance with procedures approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Minho (Subcommittee on Ethics for Social and Human Sciences, ref. SECSH035 / 2016), programme coordinators and directors were asked for permission to collect data. The survey was disseminated to different programmes in each of the fields of knowledge included in the study (for instance, Medical and Health Sciences included Medicine and Nursing programmes). However, the number of students in those programmes is not publically available. Teachers in the five universities were asked to schedule a time and place in which their students could be invited to complete the questionnaires. Data were collected in person and via email from February to July 2017. In total, 5549 students from five Portuguese public universities participated in the study (Table 1). Out of the 5549 students, 5407 completed the questionnaire in the classroom and 142 students completed the questionnaire replying to the questions by using the link provided via e-mail. Missing data analysis and estimation was carried out to ensure valid inferences would be made. All participants (n= 24 deletions, 0.43%) with more than 3 missing values on SCoA items (i.e. > 10%) were deleted. Expectation maximisation was used to impute missing values for the remaining cases. Little’s MCAR test chi-square ratio to df was statistically not significant (χ2(4144) =4980, χ2/df = 1.2, p= 0.27), suggesting the distribution of missing responses was random and imputation was valid. The final retained sample with no missing values was N=5525. Higher Education (2020) 79:377–394 382 Participants Approximately two-thirds of the participants were women (n= 3488, 63.1%). Just over half of the participants were between 20 and 25 years old (55.7%). Participants were enrolled in different academic programmes in different fields of knowledge: Medical and Health Sciences, Exact Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Social Sciences, and Humanities. About fourfifths of the participants were in the first 3 years of an undergraduate or integrated masters’ degree. 4 Instrument—students conceptions of assessment inventory Research with the Student Conceptions of Assessment (SCoA) inventory (Brown 2008) into the conceptions of higher education students have about assessment has focused on how students conceive of the purpose, nature, and function of assessment (i.e. it is for improvement, 4 An integrated masters’degree (e.g. Engineering and Medicine) differs from the consecutive model (for instance, a 3-year bachelor degree + 2-year masters’degree). The integrated model means that students follow the integrated masters’degree programme from the very beginning. Table 1 Portuguese higher education participants Demographic characteristics NPercentage (%) Universitya A 2032 36.8 B62011.2 C 1351 24.5 D 1110 20.1 E4127.5 Gender Male 1920 34.8 Female 3488 63.1 Missing 117 2.1 Field of knowledge Medical and Health Sciences 1360 24.6 Exact Sciences 210 3.8 Engineering and Technology 1514 27.4 Social Sciences 2000 36.2 Humanities 441 8.0 Cycle of study Undergraduate 2807 50.8 Master degree 196 3.5 Integrated master degree 2522 45.6 Year of study First year 1774 32.1 Second year 1527 27.6 Third year 1421 25.7 Fourth year 467 8.5 Fifth year 239 4.3 Sixth year 93 1.7 Missing 3 0.1 Total 5525 100 aThe low return rate in universities B and E may be explained, to a great extent, to their size and also to the number of students enrolled in each of the programmes included in this study. Higher Education (2020) 79:377–394383 it predicts the student’s future, it improves classroom climate, and it is irrelevant). The SCoA aggregates items into four major inter-correlated factors, with subordinate factors for the improvement and irrelevance factors. The four inter-correlated constructs are (i) assessment improves learning and teaching (improvement); (ii) assessment relates to external factors (external); (iii) assessment has affective benefit (affect); and (iv) assessment is irrelevant (irrelevance). A Portuguese version of the SCoA-VI inventory was used in Brazil (Matos 2010) and this was the version used in this study. In accordance with Matos (2010), the item (sf4, assessment tells my parents how much I’ve learnt) was deleted because most university students no longer have their grades reported to their parents. Instead of the positively packed rating scale used in the SCoA-VI, this study adopted Likert’s five-point balanced agreement rating scale (i.e. strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree, and strongly agree), following from a previous Portuguese study with nursing teachers (Gonçalves 2012). Note, while completely conventional, the restricted number of options in the positive and negative ranges usually reduces variance in the data, potentially making modelling somewhat more complicated. Studies with New Zealand secondary students and university students (Brown 2013; Brown et al. 2009c) suggest that the hierarchical statistical model fits both samples. However, studies with samples outside New Zealand indicate that no single statistical model exists to capture student beliefs (Brown 2013). Research in Brazil (Brown 2013) has suggested that the hierarchical elements of the SCoA do not work, but Matos and Brown (2015) found that the items aggregated, as per design, into the eight original factors of the SCoA in an inter-correlated model. Bifactor analysis of Brazilian and New Zealand university student SCoA responses (Matos et al. 2019) found full metric equivalence when a general SCoA factor was supplemented with three unique factors (i.e. assessment improves classroom climate, assessment improves teaching and learning, and assessment is irrelevant). These Brazil-New Zealand comparative studies suggest that there may be universal aspects of how students conceive of assessment and support the use of the inventory in Portugal. This study surveys Portuguese university students to test the validity of the SCoA for use in a second Portuguese language context and to test for differences between groups of students based on membership in relevant educational categories (i.e. their university, year of study, field of knowledge, and cycle of study). Thus, this study contributes to a growing understanding of global and local aspects of student experience of higher education assessment. Analysis Because multiple previously published statistical models for the SCoA inventory existed, four models were tested with confirmatory factor analysis to identify the model that best corresponded with the data. The models were: 1. Brown’s NZ SCoA-VI model (Brown et al. 2009c), 2. Matos’eight-factor inter-correlational model (Matos and Brown 2015), 3. A bifactor model with a general factor and four main factors (Weekers et al. 2009), and 4. An inter-correlated four main factors model, in which all subordinate factors are removed so that items load directly on the higher order factor. Higher Education (2020) 79:377–394 384 Model fit was examined in line with conventional practices (Fan and Sivo 2007; Marsh et al. 2004). A model need not be rejected if: &χ2per degree of freedom was statistically non-significant, &Gamma hat and comparative fit index (CFI) > .90, &Root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) < .08, with 90% confidence interval being less than 0.08, and &Standardized root mean residual (SRMR) < .08. When choosing between competing models, differences in the Akaike information criterion (ΔAIC) greater than 10 indicate that the smaller value is closer to the data (Burnham and Anderson 2004). By taking advantage of features of the data, it is possible to improve the fit of a model by inspection of the modification indices. Items with strong attraction to other factors violate the assumption of simple structure in which items clearly belong only to one factor. Deletion of those items can improve the fit but such actions have to be theoretically justifiable. Once a model is selected, the stability of the model across participant demographic groupings was conducted using nested multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (Brown et al. 2017). Nested invariance testing examines the equivalence of regression weights (metric equivalence) and item intercepts (i.e. scalar invariance). When differences in the CFI are < .01, the addition of equivalence constraints is considered not to have changed the quality of fit. This approach first fixes regression weights to be equivalent, before testing equivalence of intercepts or starting points. All confirmatory factor analysis and invariance testing were carried out in Amos v25 (IBM 2017) using maximum likelihood estimation. Comparison of mean scores usually requires that the groups have statistically equivalent item regressions and intercepts. To evaluate the differences in demographic categories, the Bartlett factor scores were calculated for each scale or factor in the model. Bartlett factor scores are latent scores derived from the weighted contribution of items within each factor (DiStefano et al. 2009). The scores are centred on zero with a mean of 1, meaning they behave like a z-score. Results Model selection The fit indices for the four tested models are shown in Table 2. According to AIC value, model 2 with eight inter-correlated factors was best fitting (ΔAIC = 592 over model 3). Because the chi-squared per degree of freedom of model 2 was > 17, the support for this model was weak. However, because the chi-square test is very sensitive to big sample size (Wheaton et al. 1977), a randomly selected sample of 500 participants (model 2A) was drawn and tested against the same model. 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