Discursive construction of a high-stakes test: the many faces of a test-taker

Abstract

As part of a larger project, we studied how a foreign language test got discursively constructed in the talk of upper-secondary-school leavers. A group of students were asked to keep an oral diary to record their ideas, feelings and experiences of preparing for and taking the test over the last spring term of school, as part of a high-stakes national examination. In addition, they took part in discussions either in pairs or groups of three after having learned about the final test results. After transcribing the data, drawing on a form of discourse analysis originally launched by a group of social psychologists, we identified (at least) four interpretative repertoires in the students' accounts -with different constructions of themselves as test-takers, the test, and their performance in the test -including expectations and explanations for success or failure as well as credit or blame. The findings point to variation in the uses of these repertoires, not only from one context to another but also from moment to moment. I IntroductionWe are involved in a project focusing on a high-stakes English test and one critical aspect of its validity, that is, its values and social consequences, referred to in the assessment field as consequential validity. In this article, we report on a longitudinal study on how the test was discursively constructed in the talk of students who took it over the last term of school.As background to our study, we begin by summarizing related previous studies and by describing the examination and the English test in it. After this, we spell out the starting points of our study, it being very different from previous ones in some respects. We then move on to explain the research design of our study, more

Student Accounts of the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test: A Case for Validation

“…Using protocol analysis is a useful means of providing evidence to test developers that their tests meet validity criteria when the test-taker population is culturally heterogeneous. One step further in understanding students' accounts of tests would be a discursive approach (Huhta, Kalaja, & Pitkanen-Huhta, 2006), which can offer more context-sensitive and situationvariant information about the construction of tests from the viewpoint of test-takers.…”

Speech Recognition Technology in Second Language Assessment: Social Group Preference

“…Connected with the anxiety symptom are other characteristics of candidates and their impact on test performance [11], such as race, social class and background [12], [13]. These and similar issues, investigated often in a test development context [9], can provide insights relevant to construct validity.…”

“…Related to the above is the concept of consequential validity [14], which "focuses on the social consequences of tests" [11]. This kind of investigation is devoted to examining the washback effect of tests on test takers and other stake holders involved [13].…”

“…This kind of investigation is devoted to examining the washback effect of tests on test takers and other stake holders involved [13]. It often resorts to qualitative, predominantly discourse-analysis-based techniques [11]. The washback of high-stakes tests is one of the investigated domains relevant to this study [15], [16].…”

“…Language testing research according to Huhta et al [11] has recently shown interest in non-psychometric methods. In line with this, general research literature often suggests combining surveys with interviews [32]; [35].…”