This study employed a descriptive survey research design. It is always necessary that before any progress can be made in solving a problem, a description of the phenomena be made. Description is made with the intent of making improvement of a situation. In the present study, the researcher aimed to assess teachers’ and students’ perceptions towards the practice of assessment in the Faculty of Educational and Behavioral Sciences, Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia with the intention of identifying areas that need effort for future improvement.
The population for the study was all the 2015 graduating class students and all teachers of the faculty. This faculty was selected purposively since it has a longer history of training teachers in both pre-service and in-service programs. In addition, the faculty is well known for giving short-term trainings to newly recruited teachers of other colleges and faculties in the University in the areas of instructional methods and assessment and evaluation of learning. Fifty percent of teachers and students were participated in this study using random sampling technique. A total of twenty four teachers and one hundred students successfully responded to the questionnaire.
A questionnaire consisting of seventeen items was used to collect the data. The questionnaire consisted of two parts; the first part provided the demographic information and the second part consisted of items about teachers’ and students’ perceptions towards the practice of assessment. The questionnaire was prepared by the researcher based on literature on competence-based theory; particularly, on the theoretical CBA characteristics forwarded by [[22]:112]. The items were designed in a five point Likert scale. The researcher gave levels of Likert scale numerical values to estimate the extent of agreement with statements in the questionnaire as: 5 was given for strongly agree (SA), 4 for agree (A), 3 for undecided (U), 2 for disagree(D) and 1 for strongly disagree (SD). The content validity of the questionnaire was checked by two experts of educational Psychology from the department of psychology. The instrument was then pilot tested in one department from another faculty in the University. A reliability coefficient of 0.856 using Cronbach’s alpha was obtained. The questionnaire was distributed to students in their classrooms and to teachers in their offices by the researcher. To make the study rigorous, two FGDs with students (three students from each department) were conducted. Each FGD comprised of 9 members. The groups were introduced about the purpose of the study. Their informed consent was also requested so as to record the discussion. The researcher herself facilitated the discussion. In addition, interviewing 6 experienced instructors; who were drawn from each department, was held to further access more validated data.
The responses from the questionnaires were coded, scored and then analyzed using both descriptive (means and standard deviations) and inferential (one sample t-test, independent samples t-test) statistics. The data obtained through FGDs and interviews were described qualitatively using narrative analysis.