Request for publications on (ALT) assessments in Japan (authentic, performance-based)

3 comments

1. I’m not sure you’ll find anything on Japan because technically speaking ALT’s are not contracted for T1 duties/given the lead on assessment creation and responsibilities. If a legit assessment needs to happen that will go on a students record, a licensed teacher is the one to sign off on it and is responsible for it. Even if the ALT does all the work, makes and executes the assessment etc., it’s often times outside of the scope of what ALT’s are contracted for/officially “allowed” to do.

   The most you’ll likely find is self-reported/personal anecdotes of ALT’s taking on unofficial extra responsibilities, and making a study based on that kind of data would be a bit rough. What performance based assessment do you expect part-time contracted non-licensed assistants to be involved in in an official capacity?

2. Are you searching in English or Japanese? If you search in Japanese, you may be able to catch some of the more recent papers published in in-house (*i.e.,* non-peer-reviewed) “journals.” I seem to recall having seen a couple of papers co-authored, at least, by assistant language teachers at high schools attached to universities. Whether those papers involved performance-based assessment, however, is a different question.

   As I understand the effective roles of ALTs, however, few are in a position to design or judge assessments; yet fewer, I should think, would have any inclination or chance to publish about it (as u/kaizoku222 hints at).

   You could try looking at abstracts for meeting presentations, which might yield a few bits done by people you might try to contact directly.

3. Now not checked out this paper but there might be something in here.

   https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15434303.2021.2023542