Fairness in Assessment

Gipps, Caroline; Stobart, Gordon

doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-9964-9_6

Cited by 70 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Written examinations and tests, in particular, have contributed to concerns about fairness and have led to various efforts to solve this problem, both educationally in teacher education and statistically in test construction and scoring procedures (Cole & Zieky, 2001;Gipps & Stobart, 2009). In this article, I focus only on selected aspects of fairness, mainly from ethical and pedagogical viewpoints.…”

Section: The Curriculum Journal 239mentioning

confidence: 99%

Teachers’ views of their assessment practice

Atjonen

2014

The Curriculum Journal

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The main aim of this research was to analyse teachers' views of pupil assessment. The theoretical framework was based on existing literature on advances and challenges of pupil assessment in regard to support for learning, fairness, educational partnership, feedback, and favourable methods. The data were gathered by means of a questionnaire designed for teachers of comprehensive schools. Teachers were first asked to describe a good (right/fair) and a bad (wrong/unfair) case of pupil assessment selected from the period of latest three years. Second, two lists of factors were presented, and respondents were asked to indicate which were the most influential in making pupil assessment either difficult or easy. One hundred twenty-six teachers completed and returned the questionnaire. A descriptive, mainly qualitative approach was used to analyse the data. The majority of positive views concerned the use of different assessment methods, an interactive approach, encouraging feedback, and criteria clarification. Negative views dealt with improper assessment methods, level of stringency, badly implemented assessment, and weak grounds for assessment. Three factors made assessment as difficult: interpretation of fairness, pupils with special needs, and pupils' heterogeneity. On the other hand, versatile assessment methods, curriculum advice, and pupils' good competencies made teachers' assessment work easy.

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Section: The Curriculum Journal 239mentioning

confidence: 99%

Teachers’ views of their assessment practice

Atjonen

2014

The Curriculum Journal

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“…Threats to reliability not only can derive from conscious and unconscious bias (e.g. with respect to race, social class and gender, Gipps and Murphy, 1994;Gipps and Stobart, 2009) but also from teachers not being sufficiently aware of practice and levels of achievement elsewhere. Research suggests that despite the arguments and decades of policy and practice, there is actually rather limited evidence concerning the validity and reliability of teacher assessment (Johnson, 2013).…”

Section: Validity In Test Construction and Usementioning

confidence: 99%

The Return to Final Paper Examining in English National Curriculum Assessment and School Examinations: Issues of Validity, Accountability and Politics

Torrance

2017

British Journal of Educational Studies

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There are sound educational and examining reasons for the use of coursework assessment and practical assessment of student work by teachers in schools for purposes of reporting examination grades. Coursework and practical work test a range of different curriculum goals to final papers and increase the validity and reliability of the result. However, the use of coursework and practical work in tests and examinations has been a matter of constant political as well as educational debate in England over the last 30 years. The paper reviews these debates and developments and argues that as accountability pressures increase, the evidence base for published results is becoming narrower and less valid as the system moves back to wholly end-of-course testing.Keywords: final paper examinations, English National Curriculum tests and examinations, validity and reliability of tests and examinations, coursework assessment, the politics of assessment

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“…As pointed out by Gipps and Stobart (2009;Stobart, 2005), what constitutes test fairness is situated in broad social-economic and historical contexts and is mediated by local socio-cultural perspectives and constraints. In essence, the results of this study show the reviewers' acceptance of utilitarianism, meaning that the principle of fairness in distributing educational resources is to achieve the overarching aim of maximizing economic benefit to the society (Howe, 1994).…”

Section: Content Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While some researchers and testing specialists dismiss it in discussing test fairness (Willingham and Cole 1997;Xi 2010), more and more researchers believe that a fair test should be accessible to all test takers in terms of learning opportunities since what test takers know and can do in any testing situations rely on the educational opportunities offered to test takers (Stobart 2005;Pullin and Haertel 2008). According to Gipps and Stobart (2009), issues of test fairness are bound to the joint consideration of various educational values and arguments in the content of historical perspectives. Considering the key role of high-stakes testing in the Chinese educational system (Berry 2011), whether and how university types interacted with language test performance has important implications in exploring fairness across a large country of China.…”

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confidence: 99%

The effect of a national education policy on language test performance: a fairness perspective

Song

He²

2015

Language Testing in Asia

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Project 211 is one of the most important educational policies in China, which aims at selecting a small number of "key universities" for sustainable development in the 21st century. These selected "key universities" have received substantial funding from the government so they can recruit outstanding faculty and be equipped with high quality facilities. Although this national policy has come into being for more than a decade, limited empirical studies have been conducted to examine how the policy influences students' performance as well as whether the policy is perceived to interfere with test fairness. Using differential item analysis (DIF) and content analysis, this study examined the effect of group membership (key vs. non-key universities) on one of the large-scale high-stakes language tests-the Graduate School Entrance English Examination (GSEEE). The results identified a number of DIF/DBF, all favoring test takers from key universities. A review of the flagged items by three test reviewers found a myriad of potential factors including unbalanced learning opportunities, which may contribute to performance differences between two groups. However, none of the reviewers deemed that unbalanced educational opportunities brought bias and presented a threat to fairness. Fairness in this context is conceptualized to require individuals or groups who are less well-off to sacrifice social benefits and resources to those who are better off to achieve the overarching aim of maximizing economic benefit to the society.

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Fairness in Assessment

Cited by 70 publications

References 16 publications

Teachers’ views of their assessment practice

Teachers’ views of their assessment practice

The Return to Final Paper Examining in English National Curriculum Assessment and School Examinations: Issues of Validity, Accountability and Politics

The effect of a national education policy on language test performance: a fairness perspective

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