Strategies and methods for effective learning are a rarely disputed topic in tertiary education. One of the core questions of contemporary teacher training is how to transform teacher candidates’ traditional and non-professional views which are highly influenced by their preceding educational experiences (Bruner, 1996, Falus, 2004). It is essential to map their current views in order to be able to increase the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process (Gibbs and Simpson, 2004-5). Scientific observations suggest that examples set during teacher candidates’ traineeship and the experiences of their first year in service leads them back to traditional assessment views (Falus, 2004). This phenomenon can cause a troublesome situation since the teacher candidates in present-day tertiary education should soon become the educators of the generation alpha. That generation prefers active and experience-based learning, demands to be participant and controller of the teaching-learning process instead of playing the role of a passive agent in the assessment committed with traditional methods (Oblinger, 2005). The change in learners’ personality was monitored by the top researchers who induced a rapid paradigm-shift with their works. It was established that traditional evaluation methods are not able to motivate students (Black and Wiliam, 1998), and at the same time positive effects of formative assessment was revealed (Wiggins and McTighe, 1998). Besides the necessity of emotional and personal involvement (Nicol and MacFarlane-Dick, 2006), the importance of clear goals and continuous supervision were also exposed (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). This evolution has been in parallel with the Hungarian tendency which put an emphasis on the modernization of the pedagogical practice and evaluation after the Millennium leading to the introduction of competency-based educational projects, text-based assessment, and a postgraduate course to train experts of pedagogical assessment (Csapó, 2015). Despite the positive results, initiatives were being cancelled; however, the inevitable nature of the issue thematized it again after some year. Based on teacher-thinking researches it is reasonable to assume that outside innovation is not viable without inner support and change in teachers’ views. In order to be able to support this transformation, teacher training institutions and services should be aware of their clients’ views.

The authors of the present paper hypothesized the following: (1) For teacher candidates tertiary education serves as a primary source of knowledge of pedagogical assessment, then their views are reconsidered and overridden as they aggregate on-field experience. (2) Teacher candidates suppose that they are able to give an objective and trustworthy assessment. (3) The belief in the role of the modern assessment methods for the effective teaching-learning process is more peculiar to teacher candidates than more experienced teachers. To test the abovementioned ones, a quantitative empirical study was constructed applying positivist research paradigm. An online-and-paper-filled questionnaire was used (84 items; Cronbach's alpha = 0.847), its items had been designed not to ask for sensitive information or hurt respondents’ well-being. Completing the phase of process development, questions were structured in four thematic subscales into six-question blocks: (1) sources of knowledge of assessment, (2) views on evaluation and assessment, (3) factors of effective assessment and school performance, (4) views on effective assessment methods, and learners’ assumed views on them, (5) effectiveness and the frequency of application of non-traditional assessment tools, (6) self-evaluation related to the accuracy and difficulty of assessing learners. The reliability of the questionnaire is acceptable, and the values of KMO (0.701; sig=0.000) and Bartlett criteria make it appropriate for factor analysis. Although the researchers did not have the possibility to use a representative sample, they were eager to retrieve data from different Hungarian regions having diverse level of economic development. Data collection covered half of the country (nine counties and the capital), and the distribution of the respondents according to their living place was the following: villages 12%, small towns 26%, towns 44%, and cities 18%. Nine percent of the respondents were male. The average of time-span spent in service was 22.7 years with a deviation of 9.11. The sample (N=695) consisted four subsamples: 127 lower primary school teachers, 260 upper primary teachers, 116 primary school teachers having postgraduate diploma as pedagogical assessment specialist, and 192 teacher candidates from three different teacher training institutions were willing to give anonymized answers after stating their consent. Statistical analysis was performed with the help of SPSS Statistics.

The first surprising result suggests that tertiary education is the last possible source of knowledge of assessment, even for teacher candidates. Comparing the groups there is a significant difference (mean=2.9) and it appeared among youngsters’ answers (3.5). It is thoughtful that individual experience is the first source in every age-group. Respondents were asked to evaluate their abilities related to objective and trustworthy assessment in order to deduce its efficiency. There is a significant difference between teacher candidates and experts of assessment in adjudging the successfulness of qualitative and quantitative assessment. Candidates believe that they are better at qualitative assessment, e.g. behaviour, interrogation, essays. Since these fields are hard to be examined properly, lack of knowledge could be the cause of their sense of safety. Factor analysis of the influencing classroom-related factors separated cognitive and affective (emotions towards subjects, cursors of well-being) ones. The importance of the traditional features is overemphasized, mainly for experts. Teacher candidates’ answers are significantly positive (difference=1.1; significance=0.001, scale of five). A similar tendency was revealed in the question of effective assessment methods and the frequency of usage. As it was presumed, teachers consider modern assessment methods and tools (e.g. peer-assessment, portfolio) useful but they cannot apply them in practice (mean=0.4...0.9, scale of five). The more a teacher spends in service, the less the modern pedagogical views are present in their thinking. Socialization in an educational institution overwrites modern views established in tertiary education: experienced teachers prefer traditional evaluation. In summation, teacher candidates do not consider university as the source of knowledge, and they do not trust in their familiarization in assessment. Although their views imply the basics of assessment for learning, a stable and institutional-pressure-proof structure has not been articulated yet. The reconsideration of these is inevitable in favour of practice-centred teacher training.

Black P., Wiliam D. 1998. Inside the Black Box. Raising standards through classroom assessment. Department of Education and Professional Studies, Kings College, London. Bruner, J. 1996. The Culture of Education. Harvard University Press Csapó, B. 2015. A kutatásalapú tanárképzés: nemzetközi tendenciák és magyarországi lehetőségek. In: Iskolakultúra, 25. 3–16. Falus, I. 2004. A pedagógussá válás folyamata. In: EDUCATIO, 3. 359–374. Gibbs, G., Simpson, C. (2004-5): Conditions under which assessment supports student learning. In: Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1 (1). 3–31. Hattie, J., Timperley, H. 2007. The Power of Feedback. In: Review of Educational Research, 77:1, 81–112. Nicol, D., Macfarlane-Dick, D. 2006. Rethinking Formative Assessment in Higher Education: a theoretical model and seven principles of good feedback practice. University of Glasgow. Oblinger, D. G. , Oblinger, J. L. 2005. Educating the Net Generation. University of Colorado Boulder. Wiggins, G., McTighe, J. 2000. Understanding by design. Prentice Hall, New York.