Predictability in high-stakes examinations: students’ perspectives on a perennial assessment dilemma^*

Abstract

Key debates within educational assessment continuously encourage us to reflect on the design, delivery and implementation of examination systems as well as their relevance to students. In more recent times, such reflections have also required a rethinking of who is authoritative about assessment issues and whose views we seek in order to better understand these perennial assessment dilemmas. This paper considers one such dilemma, predictability in high stakes assessment, and presents students' perspectives on this issue. The context is the Irish Leaving Certificate (LC) taken by upper secondary students (aged between 16 and 18) in order (mainly) to enter tertiary level education. The data comes from 13 group interviews with 81 students across a range of schools in Ireland. Listening to students about complex, high stakes examining problems has a limited history within the educational assessment literature. The findings from the study address this shortcoming and depict how students' insightful reflections can improve our understanding of these dilemmas. Further, students are more than able to reflect on their own situations with regard to high stakes examining contexts and have important contributions to make to our fuller understanding of those elements that will promote high quality and fair assessment.

‘[It] isn’t designed to be assessed how we assess’: rethinking assessment for qualification in the context of the implementation of the Curriculum for Wales

“…The data presented in this paper from the experiences of pupils and teachers corroborate received accounts of education in Wales being in transition between two contrasting systems (Egan, ; Davies et al , ; Connolly et al , ): from one which prizes high levels of accountability, externality and which encourages performativity to one which will ostensibly offer greater levels of curriculum freedom, teacher autonomy and agency, and less high‐stakes assessment (Donaldson, ; Welsh Government, ). Pupils in this study echoed the views of participants in Elwood et al ()’s study, articulating a clear sense that their educational experiences during their final years of compulsory schooling were too keenly focussed on performance rehearsal for examinations, which they did not always feel reflected the full range of their learning. This paper offers evidence that the accountability frameworks under which schools operated, and the reforms to GCSE and A‐level assessment implemented from 2015 have led to an ‘assessment‐driven curriculum’ (Brown, ), which prompted teachers to engage in performance‐driven classroom practices designed to improve visible and externally mandated measures of progress and school standards—often against the professional and pedagogical judgment of teachers themselves.…”

“…Elwood, Hopfenbeck and Baird () note that high‐stakes summative assessments can increase pressure on young people, obscuring the ‘purpose’ of schooling as learning, and reframing their educational experience as being geared towards ‘performing’ in examinations. Consequences of such an ethos can include greater assessment‐related anxiety (Sommer & Arendasy, ), a tendency to adopt performance goal orientations (von der Embse et al , ) and a trend towards surface‐level learning rather than deep‐level learning (Vandewalle et al , ).…”

National assessment policy reform 14–16 and its consequences for young people: student views and experiences of GCSE reform in Northern Ireland and Wales

“…This paper considers a significant gap in the educational assessment and policy literature by focusing on the consequences of assessment policy reform from the perspectives of students, particularly in this case from students in Northern Ireland and Wales. While some existing research addresses students' views or experiences of particular assessment techniques, it is rare for their perspectives on assessment policy and/or its reform to be given consideration (Elwood et al, 2017). It is argued that not only do young people have a right for their views to be given due weight on public policy issues that affect them, but also that they have notable perspectives which can make an important contribution to our understanding of assessment policy implementation and success (Elwood, 2013).…”

Introducing school-based teacher-led assessments in the Irish school context: challenging the practice of favouring centralized, externally-conducted assessment

“…Lysaght, 2015), high-stakes tests in Ireland(Elwood, Hopfenbeck, & Baird 2017), the impact of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results on Introducing school-based teacher-led assessments in the Irish school context: challenging the practice of favouring centralized, externally-conducted assessment 11 assessment practices (Kirwan, 2015) and assessment with respect to the changing assessment landscape through the introduction of the Junior Cycle Framework(Lenihan, Hinchion, & Laurenson, 2016). There has been a noticeable increase in greater support and professional development in Ireland for the use of assessment in classrooms, such as report card templates, problem-solving in mathematics and assessment for key competences.…”