AN INVESTIGATION OF THE CONFORMITY BETWEEN AN ASSESSMENT POLICY DOCUMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION

This paper explores the extent to which the English Department adheres to the assessment guidelines depicted in the assessment policy document in one of the training centres in the United Arab Emirates. To this end, the study attempts to answer four questions: 1) What are the main components of the Training Centre's Assessment Policy Document?, 2) What are the main guidelines of the assessment practice in the English Department?, 3) What are the differences between the policy's text and implementation? and 4) How can this gap be probably bridged?. In order to conduct the gap analysis, three steps have been made. Firstly, the assessment policy document has been analyzed, and the various sections that compose it have been outlined. Secondly, three semi-structured interviews were made with the three English mentors in the training centre, who were responsible for the assessment procedures and documentation. The questions of the interviews were built based on the assessment policy document's various sections and on the details of each section. Following the interviews, the data provided in the policy document and those provided by the three English mentors in the interviews were compared to find out whether or not the assessment implementation was in congruence with the assessment policy text. The results of the study have revealed a number of disparities between the assessment policy text and the implementation at different levels. Finally, the paper reflects on the gap between policy and implementation by analyzing the possible causes that have probably led to such gap and by proposing a policy model that may facilitate in narrowing the text-implementation gap in assessment..