The use of learning rubrics in English as a foreign language primary school classrooms in Sweden

Sammanfattning: Learning rubrics are adapted to the students’ understanding, and contain a clear focus of what they are supposed to learn. Teachers’ knowledge about them seems to be limited, and assessment rubrics are a more common tool for teachers’ assessment practices (Alm, 2015).Even though the Swedish school curriculum encourages teachers to use formative assessment as an active part of their teaching, due to its beneficial factors for students learning development, studies have shown that summative assessment is a preferred practice among teachers.This paper analyzes the teachers use of learning rubrics in English as a foreign language classroom in the Swedish primary schools. The focus lays on finding out teachers experiences and beliefs about using learning rubrics as a formative assessment tool. According to theories and findings within formative assessment a certain set of criteria must be met, something which learning rubrics do. In order to fulfill this papers purpose, we combined a quantitative study that was carried out on 55 teachers, and a qualitative study that was centered around interviewing 5 teachers. Our results showed that 38 % of the 4-6 EFL teachers used a continuous formative assessment, which occurred during lessons or over a longer span of time. In regards to the use of learning rubrics only 3% used learning rubrics for a formative purpose. Results also revealed that a combination of learning rubrics, and assessment rubrics are more commonly used rather than only the use of learning rubrics in the language classroom. Through the combination of these two types of rubrics it helped in clarifying what was assessed and in what way it was assessed. It would also be used to make teachers’ arguments visible both for the students and the caretakers at home. However, if teachers do not apply the necessary adaptations to the formative process, the benefits are not obtained.