Assessment is at the cornerstone of state educational policy: the use of assessment for instructional guidance (i.e., formative assessment) offers one of the most powerful ways for improving schooling. The changes undergone by national educational systems have led school personnel (first of all, principals and teachers) to face  different assessment data, information, and methods. The accountability trend has heavily impacted educational systems, putting remarkable pressure on teachers, who are now more conscious of the need for using assessment information for decision-making in the classroom context (Darling-Hammond, 2010). With a strong emphasis on the alignment of teaching, learning, and assessment the reconsideration of assessment methods and strategies has become relevant, as well as the need for a new assessment culture more responsive to educational policy requirements, school system needs, and teacher practice instances. In this vein, formative assessment has been recognized as integral to curriculum design and to the learning journey of all students. Formative assessment is about process and outcomes. It enables learners to determine their progress through the medium of on-going feedback, and it also determines whether students have met the intended learning outcomes (Andrade & Heritage, 2018).

There is a political and institutional high-level commitment to promoting an assessment design, which is holistic and based on co-creation between students and teachers. Substantive research on developing practice in assessment feedback is also available (Wiliam, 2017). However, core practices in student assessment often remain problematic, and teachers face diverse challenges in using research to improve assessment and feedback practices: an aspect clearly emerged during the Covid-19.

In this perspective, the recognition of the crucial role of teacher assessment literacy as strategic support for teaching and learning within the standard-based framework of education (DeLuca, Bellara, 2013) has become more evident in policy documents and standards.

However, despite the emphasis on teacher assessment literacy, recent research confirms that teachers are not prepared to effectively integrate assessment into their daily teaching practice (McMillan, 2003; Stiggins, 2010).

Entering this lively debate, the present papers reports on a study aimed to:

• Define e probe a new definition of teacher formative assessment literacy
• Compare and contrast models of teacher assessment literacy;
• Identify which aspects affect the alignment between educational policies, teacher education, and teacher professional development paths, and teacher assessment practice.

After a literature review, a new definition of formative assessment literacy was created. Three main dimensions of assessment literacy were identified: conceptual, practical, and socio-emotional. Adopting a theory-driven approach, the Teacher Formative Assessment Literacy (TFALS) was developed in line with the new definition. The initial item pool consisting of 38 items was developed based in-depth literature review and two focus group interviews with primary (N = 5) and secondary (N = 5) teachers from Hong Kong. The items were revised based on teachers’ feedback and the number of items was reduced to 30 items. These 30 items were then reviewed by a panel of nine experts who have both assessment expertise and teaching experience. Further revisions were made and the final version of the TFALS has 29 items: 10 items in the conceptual dimension, 11 items in the practical dimension, and 8 items in the socio-emotional dimension. All items are with a six-point Likert-type response scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Slightly disagree, 4 = Slightly agree, 5 = Agree, 6 = Strongly agree). The questionnaire will be administered in mid Feb 2021. The participants will be primary and secondary school teachers from Hong Kong (N = 300) and Italy (N = 250). As the original scale was developed in English, we followed the standard procedure (International Test Commission, 2017) to forward- and backward-translate the scale from English to Chinese for the Hong Kong sample and from English to Italian for the Italian sample. . Two analytical approaches (i.e., factor analysis and Rasch analysis) will be used to investigate the psychometric properties of the TFALS. Applying both factor analysis and Rasch analysis to the same set of data can provide comprehensive information of the quality of the scale. Such an analytical method has been applied in a number of empirical studies (e.g., Chang & Engelhard, 2016; Deneen et al. 2013; Testa et al. 2019; Yan 2018) that demonstrated benefits to validating and refining instruments.

The results of the proposed study may set the groundwork for long-term implementation programs and formative assessment literacy professional development paths. This paper will be helpful to: • Better conceptualize teacher formative assessment practice; • Improve teacher formative assessment literacy; • Refine educational policies in a way that is responsive to teachers’ needs; • Strengthen theory and practice on teachers’ preparation regarding assessment (and more specifically, formative assessment).

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