A pilot study investigating further education engineering lecturers’ readiness for the shift in Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC) assessment

Abstract

The summative assessment approach of all level three Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC) qualifications is changing away from a purely teacher-based, criterion-referencing internal assessment approach to a mixture of internal and external assessments including exams for core units. As this is a shift away from what teachers may be familiar with, the question of whether teachers are cognisant of how to effectively prepare students for high-stake exams arises. This paper reports on a pilot study preparing such an investigation by developing questionnaires with relevant techniques recommended in the literature and then comparing responses of two groups of teachers. One group is BTEC lecturers who may be unfamiliar with exam preparation. The other group routinely prepare further education students for General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams and, therefore, is familiar with exam preparation techniques and serves as a control group. One aspect of the research outcomes pertains to the refinement of the research method and suggests incorporating a formal interview. The other aspect relates to the tentative research results, which found that the responses of both groups have a high degree of agreement. However, there are some differences when it comes to detailed assessment preparation planning, student motivation and parental involvement. As the number of participants was very small, any conclusions suggested here need to be substantiated by a larger sample involving more than one college.