Assessing oracy: Chasing the teachers’ unspoken oracy construct across disciplines in the landscape between policy and freedom

Abstract

The aim is to capture teachers' implicit oracy construct across disciplines through surveying 495 teachers on a high-stakes oral national exam in the 10th grade. The survey and the results were interpreted with concepts and ideas from rhetorical theory and tradition. The results of the study show that teachers value a complex oracy construct. The teachers' genre expectancy for oracy seem to be a balance between the three modes of persuasion: logos (i.e., subject specific content), ethos (the ability to display character), and pathos (the ability to have an emotional influence on the audience). The constructs have specific discipline characteristics as well as features that are consistent within disciplines. For teachers, a pattern of a unified oracy construct is developed from, and embedded in, their collective everyday practices, culture, and traditions. The discussion raises issues related to future curriculum development and educational sustainability.

Lærernes stemme om det uuttalte muntlighetskonstruktet: «Muntlighet – kompetansen som blir tatt forgitt»

“…Some teachers argued that these behaviors were not supposed to count in their subject according to the core curriculum; however, they stated that they were only "human" so that, of course, they could count in the assessment process. This could be one reason for the high values on ethos and pathos in the summative assessment and across disciplines for the oracy assessment construct for the oral exam, as Kaldahl (2019) found. In the current article, where the teachers spoke about both the summative and the formative oracy assessment constructs, the overall construct had lesser ethos and pathos values and an even higher value of logos than the summative construct in Kaldahl's (2019) quantitative findings.…”

“…This could be one reason for the high values on ethos and pathos in the summative assessment and across disciplines for the oracy assessment construct for the oral exam, as Kaldahl (2019) found. In the current article, where the teachers spoke about both the summative and the formative oracy assessment constructs, the overall construct had lesser ethos and pathos values and an even higher value of logos than the summative construct in Kaldahl's (2019) quantitative findings. One explanation for this is that in summative assessment situations, the external censors do not know the students and therefore the students' ethos has to be established during the examination: hence, a higher ethos score for summative assessment.…”

“…Even though there were few informants who represented many subjects, indications were found that the teachers valued oracy, which has subject-specific characteristics that simultaneously entail consistent features across disciplines, as found in Kaldahl's (2019) quantitative research.…”

“…Svenkerud (2013) also pointed out that research has not provided knowledge of good oracy across subjects in Norwegian schools, calling for research on this topic. Kaldahl (2019) attempted to answer this call and explored 495 teachers' notions of good-quality oracy in a quantitative study; these teachers were examiners across subjects on the final, high-stakes oral national exam in Norway. The results showed a possible summative oracy construct in seven disciplines, as well as a pattern for an across disciplinary summative oracy construct.…”

Key elements of L1-oral language teaching and learning in secondary education. A literature review

“…Despite the increased attention for L1-oral language education in the last twenty years, there is hardly any present-day, empirical evidence about effective L1-oral language education available (Bonset & Braaksma, 2008;Kaldahl, Bachinger & Rijlaarsdam, 2019;Kaldahl, 2019). In order to inform L1-teachers in secondary schools and L1-curricula reformers, we analyzed international research literature to deduce key elements of good quality L1-oral language teaching.…”