Malaysia is looking up to Macedonian formative assessment

The International Conference Assessment for learning in 21 century held in Ohrid, May 23-24, 2011, was an excellent opportunity for sharing good practice and tools for implementing assessment to enhance student learning in the classroom through a mix of invited multinational speakers, contributed papers, posters and engaging discussions.

Roslina Binti Yaakub, coming all the way from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, joined the conference. She is a former teacher, currently employed in the Teacher Training Institute and working on a research for teachers’ teaching assessment conceptions (TTAC) in Malaysia. This is her second visit to the Balkans, following the one a few years back when she visited Slovenia to see how formative assessment is being implemented there. That has been an encouragement for Roslina to include comparative element in her study, by validating a questionnaire for teachers’ teaching assessment conceptions that she has developed and compare the Malaysian school assessment to the ones practiced in Slovenia and Macedonia.

During a short interview, she shared with us the impressions from the Conference, as well as the experiences she feels need to be shared between Macedonia and Malaysia regarding the possibilities for formative assessment in the two different educational systems.
“This conference is an excellent opportunity for networking and sharing experience. I definitely feel that Malaysia needs these kind of gatherings, and if we organize one in the near future, Macedonian experts would be much welcomed there to share their knowledge on the topic”, Roslina said.
Coming from a country where no formative assessment exists, the conference will be very useful for Roslina. Roslina also said: “We, in Malaysia, do not have formative assessment so I came here to see how it works. I am the first person doing formative assessment in the country. I am into formative assessment because that is something you do during the lesson; it helps you find out what’s lacking in students’ learning.”  In order to see how formative assessment implements in practice, after the Conference she visited PS “Kuzman Josifovski Pitu”. 

Primary Education Project also provided questionnaire filled out by 500 primary teachers in Macedonia, investigating teachers’ conceptions on assessment. These will help Roslina in validating a questionnaire on teachers’ teaching assessment conception in two  cultural and educational systems: Macedonian and Malaysian. Regarding the results from the Macedonian survey, Roslina pointed out: “At the moment, my professor back in Malaysia is very interested in formative assessment. I would share these results with him because he has ideas about formative assessment, we would take actions, for example: organize seminars and try to make the higher institutions go with the initiative.”

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