Teachers? implementation level of assessment and evaluation approaches suggested by 4-5th grade mathematics curricula

This study aims to determine the primary school teachers? implementations level of the assessment and evaluation approaches suggested by 2005 Mathematics Curriculum, the factors influencing theirs assessment practices and theirs problems faced during practice. Survey and case study methods were used in the study. The survey questionnaire including 6 sub-sections were administered via posting and online to 975 4th and 5th grade primary teachers from 258 schools in 15 cities among 7 geographical regions of Turkey, and 512 completed questionnaires returned back. In addition, a case study was conducted with 8 teachers selected from Trabzon by using same questionnaire, interview, in-class observation and document analysis methods. The collected quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS 15.0 and the qualitative data with NVivo 8.0. It was determined that the primary school teachers mostly carried out summative assessment, focused on the measurement of the lower levels of cognitive skills, gave judging feedbacks, and assessed learning process and product. It was also revealed that the teachers used traditional and performance assessment tools frequently whereas they could not use alternative and performance assessment tools effectively. Furthermore, the mostly challenging problems of teachers were determined as lack of information about alternative assessment tools, insufficient in-service training and expert support, messy of the assessment forms, the time-consuming, the pressure of central examinations, over population of classes, and deficiency in the infrastructure and equipments of schools. It was also found that the teachers? assessment practices was shaped according to theirs' mathematics learning beliefs, teaching experience, their education program of university, the size of classes, the location of the school, and problems encountered by teaches in teaching environment. In summary, this study reveals that the contemporary assessment approaches prescribed by 2005 curriculum were not put into practice sufficiently and practices that reflect traditional assessment approaches is still going on.