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Abstract
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Assessing students’ performance and the quality of the instruction is considered as an important ability of teachers. But, teachers believe that they need formal assessment training (Wise, Lukin, & Roos, 1991; Mertler, & Campbell, 2005) to become assessment literates (Plake, 1993). Popham (2009) emphasizes that teachers’ inadequate skill and knowledge of assessment cause an impair in the education. Assessment literacy (AL) expects teachers to be aware of. assessment literacy as an important professional knowledge and capacity a teacher should possess (Fan, et al., 2011). Writing is an important language skill that needs a great consideration in first and second language education contexts as it is one of the main channel of communication for academic and real life contexts. Moreover, because of the complexity of writing skills, writing teachers should receive unique training. However, it seems that teaching writing has not received adequate attention, On the other hands, as PytlikZillig, & Bruning, (2009) and Crusan, Plakans, & Gebril, (2016) argue, due to the teachers’ less training in assessment, mostly they denied to teach and assess writing. Having investigated the problems associated with writing, Lee (2010) offered a solution, ‘strong professional development can lead to teachers seeing themselves as writing teachers and as assessors of writing’. This study aims to re-construct an instrument to measure assessment literacy of Iranian writing teachers, called Teachers’ Writing Assessment Literacy (TWAL). This questionnaire is hoped to elicit, how teachers gained their assessment knowledge and skill, whether they were trained, and finally what they think about assessment literacy and their level of assessment literacy in general.
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