Advancing Toward Democratic Assessment in Morocco: EFL Teachers’ Critical Language Assessment Literacy

Despite the growing vested efforts to enhance teachers’ language assessment literacy (LAL), its critical dimension remains relatively understudied in current literature. Critical language assessment (CLA) is a new approach that goes beyond the technical aspects of testing to critically examine the broader implications of language assessments, especially in terms of power, fairness, ethics, and social justice (Shohamy, 2022). The current study adopted a cross-sectional survey design and drew on a validated scale of Critical Language Assessment Literacy (CLAL). A total of 194 participants from different school settings were selected using a mixture of purposive and snowball sampling approaches. Descriptive statistics were utilized to analyze the data. The findings revealed that while Moroccan EFL teachers demonstrated high awareness of certain CLAL components, they showed only moderate awareness of the political, social, and ideological influences on language testing as well as the impact of government policies on the administration and interpretation of tests. These results clearly highlight deficiencies in certain components of CLAL among Moroccan EFL teachers, which offer important insights for pedagogical and policy practices, particularly in shaping assessment-driven teacher training and educational policy in Morocco. Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation, 31(1)