A Vygotskian perspective on teacher LAL (Language Assessment Literacy) development: Insights from a narrative inquiry in Vietnam

Growing attention has been paid to language assessment literacy (LAL) particularly among teachers; however, there remains limited research into the process of teacher LAL development in a way that privileges teachers’ own perceptions of this process. To bridge this gap, the current study has adopted as its theoretical framework Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (SCT), particularly SCT’s notions of concept, perezhivanie (lived experience), and genetic method. Accordingly, the current study views teacher LAL development as a process of language assessment concept formation and aims to explore how teachers’ language assessment concepts are formed, what sociocultural elements mediate those concept formations, and how teachers emotionally experience this process. To fulfil these aims, a narrative inquiry was undertaken at a Vietnamese university, drawing on over 40 hours of audio and video data collected from three novice Vietnamese EFL teachers via a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and verbal reports over three months as well as relevant institutional and personal documents. The data were then analysed in two rounds, namely narrative analysis followed by analysis of narratives. The current narrative inquiry has found that teacher assessment concept formation was a long, complex, and rather messy process in which the stages were interrelated and overlapping. Furthermore, mediators from all three genetic domains were simultaneously involved in teacher language assessment concept formation. Importantly, the mediation of sociocultural factors was not direct but refracted through each participant’s constantly evolving perezhivanie. Finally, the study has demonstrated both the strength and limit of emotions in mediating language assessment concept formation. Based on the above findings, this research has proposed a sociocultural model of teacher LAL development and argued for the application of concept-based instruction (CBI) in promoting teacher LAL.