Teachers Perspectives and Practices of Assessment in Health Education in Primary School

Abstract

Health Education is one of the core subjects studied in primary and secondary schools in Malaysia. However,

assessment through Health Education is not widely used among teachers as there is no standardized

assessment to test the level of students understanding. This study was conducted to determine the

perspectives and practices of assessment among Health Education teachers. 40 Health Education teachers

from 5 schools in Bukit Mertajam, Pulau Pinang were involved in this study. A set of questionnaires were

used as a research instrument containing 37 items using Likert scale. The reliability value of the instrument

is ? = 0.80. Data were analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) software version

23.0. Results showed all the teachers are only at ‘Agree’ and ‘Undecided levels for all the perspectives items

about assessment that have been given. The component item for types and forms of assessment component

showed the highest percentage of 37.5% and 20% teachers are at ‘agree’ level with mean value of 3.30.

Meanwhile, as for the frequency of assessment practices results showed all the items were rated only at

‘Sometimes’ and ‘Frequently’. No significant difference was found in the mean item level between male and

female teacher for both agreement and frequency item. The overall mean of assessment items is at a ‘agree’

and ‘sometimes’ level of 3.45 and 3.74 respectively. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of assessment

activities involvement teachers in developing their knowledge in classroom assessment.