Assessing learning in Literary Studies in English Language Teacher Education

Abstract

The assessment of learning in literature in English language teacher education (ELTEd) has mainly taken place at random instead of as a planned action. We seek for an answer here, then, to what we assess when we assess literature in English language teacher education. For that sake, we examined our assessment proposals and the answers provided by the students of English Speaking Literature II at the ELTEd program at the National University of La Pampa, Argentina, in 2015. The data were collected from mid-term exams, correction forms, and final papers, and analyzed qualitatively in view of their correspondence with the cultural, linguistic, or personal-growth models of teaching literature. The results show that our working tasks display a tendency to value processes that are in tune with the personal-growth model, although in the assessment in general there is a strong tendency to give particular relevance to linguistic precision. Nevertheless, our final considerations in the students’ papers did aspire to a contextualized integration of the models of teaching at stake. To find answers to our initial question will allow us to determine to what extent our assessment meets our teaching practices, which in forms our role of socially and pedagogically responsible professors.