In New Zealand the National Education Monitoring Project requires approximately 100 teachers every year to take on a new role of implementing an assessment programme in five schools. It is therefore valuable to the Project to identify the successful aspects of the training programme as well as aspects that could be improved.

Each year NEMP gathers assessment data, in order to get a broad picture of the educational achievement of representative samples of New Zealand students (Crooks & Flockton: 2006). To assist in this process, teachers are employed as teacher administrators for a period of six weeks. They work in pairs, in five schools, spending a week at each school. Assessment data is gathered through the administration of a range of NEMP assessment tasks. In each school they work with a group of twelve students. To gain the knowledge of how to do this, the teachers spend the first week on a training course providing the background to the NEMP project, the assessment tasks, the approaches used to gather data and the technology used in delivering and recording the assessment tasks.

The tasks are administered to individuals and groups of four students. Each student is engaged with the assessment tasks for about four hours over the week. In order to elicit as much detailed information as possible, the teachers question students so that they demonstrate their knowledge, skills and understanding in a variety of learning areas. NEMP collates this data and the analysis is made available in annual reports, providing information for educators on how well the overall national standards in education are being maintained and where improvements might be needed.

The teacher administrators play a pivotal role in the successful implementation of the project. Their knowledge of school systems is essential when working in different school settings as it enables them to manage their assessment schedule within the confines of a school timetable. They must communicate productively with other educational professionals and have an understanding of events that teachers and students are engaged in throughout the day that will impact on their work. NEMP particularly looks for teachers who can establish a positive rapport with students from a variety of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, in a short space of time. The teacher administrators need to embrace the aims and the methodology of NEMP.

In the training week, teacher administrators are made familiar with the assessment tasks and the four approaches to implement those tasks. They are provided with information on the background of NEMP, which includes the aims of the project and NEMP's philosophy of assessment. Teachers attend sessions that inform and instruct on the four assessment task approaches and the use of the computer and video technology integral to implementing and recording the tasks. Each session focuses on one particular aspect of the administration process. The tasks are explained through instruction and demonstration, with reference to a comprehensive task manual that details the equipment needed for each task and the accompanying script for communicating the task to students. Procedures for dealing with the technology, organisation of paperwork and contacting schools are demonstrated with reference to an administration manual. In each session, teacher administrators are given an opportunity to ask questions pertaining to aspects of their role. They are also given hands-on time with task equipment and technology equipment, in order to become familiar with the administration and set-up of the tasks. The hands-on sessions are usually informal, with teacher administrators working with their partner and familiarising themselves with the tasks by reading through the script pertinent to each task. In some instances, a teacher administrator will model the implementation of a task in an individual or group assessment situation, using other administrators in the role of 'student'. By the end of the training week, administrators should be able to piece together individual aspects of their role in order to form a complete picture of what the administrator role entails. The degree to which they can achieve this will affect the perceptions of their role, the way in which they implement their role and the quality of the assessment data they collect. The teachers' background experiences and the expectations that they bring to the administration role, along with the quality and content of the training process that they undergo, need to combine to make the teacher an effective administrator of assessment tasks for NEMP.

As was mentioned earlier, work by Alison Gilmore (1999) suggested that some teachers were not consistent in the way that they administered tasks. Although effort is put into training teachers to become effective NEMP administrators, there has currently been no investigation into how teachers perceive their role as administrators and if they understand the purpose and requirements of the administrator role. Previous research has suggested that teacher perceptions influence the acquisition and incorporation of new knowledge into practice. This research seeks to ascertain the affect of teacher perceptions on their ability to adopt a new role successfully. Research questions were formulated to enable the study to investigate the initial perceptions of teachers when applying for the role of teacher administrator and how these change as they: undergo their training; work on the task of administrating; participate in the task of marking the data collected, in order to establish if and how performance is affected by perception. The effect of teacher's perceptions on their ability to adopt a new role successfully is also an important consideration for schools and teacher educators who often require teachers to take on a new role in order to implement new pedagogical practices.

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