Abstract:
Whilst practitioners and scholars have acknowledged the utility and value of student self-assessment (SSA), they have also shared concerns about issues pertaining to its implementation and reliability within classroom settings. As acknowledged in the literature, challenges associated with the implementation and reliability of SSA, as well as the development and acquisition of SSA skills comprise time, resources, students’ attitudes and beliefs, mindless or gratuitous self-assessment, teacher-student roles and relationships, students’ psychological safety, tacit knowledge, teachers’ beliefs about teaching, learning and assessment; and using students’ own self-assessment scores as part of their overall assessment. Context, also referred to as external, situational or environmental factors, may serve as potential sources of or mediators between teachers’ motivational beliefs and their pedagogical practices. At the classroom-level, contextual factors reported as inhibiting teachers’ SSA practices have included class time, setting and integrating students’ own learning goals, social dimensions incorporating teacher-student interactions and relationships, and student attitudes. School-level contextual factors identified as hindering teachers’ efforts to engage students in self-assessment activities have encompassed access to instructional resources and technological tools, a lack of teacher professional learning programs within schools, the revision of teaching programs, and school accountability measures.Set within social cognitive theory and utilising the SSA literature as well as Buehl and Beck’s (2015) ecological model of teachers’ beliefs-practices relationship in a system of internal and external supports and hindrances as frameworks to ground the investigation, this qualitative investigation explored contextual factors impacting on secondary classroom music teachers’ implementation of SSA pedagogical and assessment practices in music performance instruction. Findings from thematic analysis revealed the classroom climate and culture incorporating students’ SSA behaviours, expectations and norms of the class; teachers’ perceptions of students’ SSA attitudes, beliefs and behaviours; and class time constraints to be impeding classroom-level factors. At the school-level, constraining factors were identified as a lack of instructional resources, teacher community, teacher professional learning, and time constraints. This paper examines factors found to obstruct teachers’ SSA practices, and presents an interpretative analysis and discussion of the findings from the interview data and literature. Potential implications for pedagogy, teacher education programs and providers are discussed by way of suggested strategies to mitigate against these constraining factors.