Secondary level EFL teachers’ perceptions, practices, and challenges of implementing CAS in public schools in Nepal. A Narrative Inquiry

Sammanfattning: Aim: The objective of my study was to explore the EFL teachers’ perceptions and experiences of using CAS in Nepalese public schools. It was further aimed to explore their current practice of CAS and the potential challenges they have faced in implementing CAS in language teaching. Theory: The study adopted the theory of social constructivism that addresses how social interaction in language classrooms using CAS creates knowledge and fosters their learning. It recognizes the social aspects of learning, such as conversation, interaction, and application of knowledge to real-life situations. Method: It is a qualitative research study that adopted Narrative inquiry as a research method. The interview was used to collect data. Narrative analysis was done by extracting different sections of text from the verbatim data, classifying, and categorizing them by generating different themes. Results: Based on the narratives shared by EFL teachers, it was found that the teachers have a positive mindset toward implementing CAS as it reflects the true picture of what students have learned so far and the need to make further improvements. CAS also contributes to an improved and fair evaluation in language learning, whereas homework and classwork have been found to be practised as a tool of CAS in language classrooms. Furthermore, teachers at the secondary level use CAS as an umbrella term consisting of a range of assessment tools such as portfolios, project work, homework, self-assessment, peer review, project work, poster presentation, maintaining rubrics, etc. The study revealed that large classroom sizes, lack of resources, learning materials, school infrastructure, excessive workload, language barriers, students with mixed ability groups and lack of training for them are major challenges in implementing CAS. The study suggests that EFL teachers employ tools of CAS to lead to more effective teaching and learning practices and benefit students' learning outcomes.