Teachers’ Professional Judgment in Malaysia Classroom-Based Assessment: The Iconic Runaway in Education?

Abstract

Malaysia education system is moving towards a more holistic approach in school assessment with the implementation of classroom-based assessment. It is believed that it will provide better appraisal with fairer judgment for the students. However, teachers being the sole evaluator of the students’ performance has invited many parties doubting the ability of humans as a fair judge. This concept paper aims to explore the challenges faced by teachers in Malaysia in exercising sound professional judgment in classroom-based assessment. This is done by going through the transformation in Malaysia education system from centralized exam-based assessment to the current classroom-based assessment which is more personalized and student-centered. This paper identifies four key challenges, which are assessment literacy, teachers' experience, duration of evaluation, and ability to justify decisions. It discusses the need for continuous knowledge development, experience sharing, reducing the class size and the development of precise instruments to measure teacher’s professional judgment. This paper concludes with a call for the education community to recognize and respect teachers' professional judgment. A reasonable approach to tackle this issue could be taken by the ministry by enhancing teacher training, understanding the readiness of teachers as assessors, exploring the relationship between teaching activities and judgment quality and to design and validate instruments that can measure teachers' professional judgment.