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chapter 6: teachers and reading instruction
For oral questioning and oral summary, teachers’ responses were
averaged and combined as one reporting category. Similarly, teachers’
responses for short-answer, and paragraph-length written responses were
averaged to create a constructed-response category. Then, the response
options of at least once a week and once or twice a month were combined.
Exhibit 6.25 presents the summary of teachers’ responses regarding
their approaches to assessing students’ reading performance. More than
three fourths of students (78%), on average internationally, had teachers who
listened to them read aloud at least weekly. Eighty-five percent had teachers
who used oral assessment techniques (oral questioning or summary reports)
at least weekly, and 63 percent had teachers who used written assessment
(short or paragraph length). On average, multiple-choice questions were
used with less than half the students (42%), but this varied considerably
across countries.
Two countries (Bulgaria and the Netherlands) had increases from
2001 in the percentage of students whose teachers listened to students
read aloud, while only Iceland had a decrease (16 percentage points). The
percentage of students whose teachers used oral questioning or summary
reports to monitor students’ progress increased from 2001 in several
countries, including Hungary, Iceland, Macedonia, New Zealand, Norway,
and the Slovak Republic. Only in Latvia did the percentage decrease. The
percentages of students assessed with multiple-choice questions increased
from 2001 in Bulgaria, Germany, Morocco and the United States, whereas
decreases occurred in France, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia. Since 2001
the percentage of students whose teachers asked them to write responses to
what they read increased in Germany, Italy, and Latvia.
Exhibit 6.26 presents teachers’ reports about how they use information
from classroom assessment to make decisions about instruction. On average
internationally, most students had teachers who used classroom assessment
in reading to adapt instruction (91%), inform parents of students’ progress
(92%), and identify students in need of remediation (91%). On average
internationally, teachers used assessments for 72 percent of students to
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