ITECPD Sharpens Expertise of Affiliate Colleges of Education Tutors
The Institute for Teacher Education and Continuing Professional Development (ITECPD), University of Education, Winneba (UEW), has organised a five-day workshop on test item construction for tutors of affiliated Colleges of Education (CoE).
The tutors were guided to construct test items for level 200 semester two courses in alignment with relevant policies such as the National Teacher Standards (NTS), the National Teacher Education Curriculum Framework (NTECF), the National Teacher Education Assessment Policy (NTEAP), and Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI).
The workshop, which started on Wednesday, 21st and ended on Sunday, 25th July, 2021, trained participants on the usage of the table of specification to review and sample test items for year two semester two courses. The workshop also fortified attendees with the needed skills to review and sample test items that reflect equity, inclusivity and cross-cutting issues in level 200 semester two courses for CoE examinations.
The Director of ITECPD, Prof. Dandy George Dampson, in his welcome address, underscored the need to continue mentoring, guiding, coaching and nurturing the tutors to develop and acquire the basic skills in test item construction to develop a standardised assessment framework for assessing students. “We need to remember that the teaching and learning process ends only when we have been able to assess and grade our students. It is, therefore, the duty of every tutor to be an active and full participant in setting test items for our students.”
Prof. Dampson
Prof. Dampson implored both the facilitators and the participants to consider and incorporate the seven basic NTEAP guidelines namely cognitive complexity, content quality, meaningfulness, language appropriateness, transfer and generalisability, fairness, and reliability while they go through and sample the test items. He indicated that achieving those seven generally accepted criteria would call for the development of in-depth knowledge, technical skills and know-how in test item construction.
Among the topics treated at the five-day workshop included “consideration and inclusion of GESI, NTS, NTECF and NTEAP in the construction/writing of test items, item construction and use of table of specification, construction of objective test items, and review and sampling of test items by subject-based groups”. The rationale for the presentations were to enable participants to appreciate underlying policy issues in year two course manuals, understand the basis of using table of specification in test item writing, and understand the focus areas in the professional development manual.
There were plenary sessions where participants discussed emerging issues from review and final writing of test items by subject-based groups.
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