An investigation of the reliability and validity of peer, self-, and teacher assessment

Abstract

Alternative types of assessment have been introduced to align to students’ learning aims. Although the growing body of literature about alternative types of assessment such as peer-assessment and self-assessment shed light on the advantages and benefits of embedding assessment in classroom activities, there is no consensus on the consistency and accuracy of these types of assessment. Therefore this study attempted to investigate the reliability and validity of self-assessment and peer assessment of Iranian EFL learners’ written and oral production data. The data were obtained from 32 upper-intermediate students who were each required to write a three-paragraph essay and present a ten-minute lecture. The results indicated that peer assessment was more reliable in assessing oral production than written production; however, self-assessment was highly reliable in written production assessment. Moreover, there was a higher correlation between peer assessment and teacher assessment in assessing written production than oral production. While there was a high correlation between self-assessment and teacher assessment in assessing written production, the correlation between self-assessment and teacher assessment in assessing oral production was not significant. It can be concluded that self-, peer, and teacher assessment are both reliable and valid, though they differed for oral and written production tasks.