Language Assessment Culture
- PDF / 149,792 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 439.37 x 663.307 pts Page_size
- 97 Downloads / 218 Views
LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT CULTURE
INTRODUCTION
The notion of ‘culture’ represents a fundamental basic human concept that underlies historical developments and the creation of civilizations. Though there are numerous ways of defining culture, it is often perceived as referring to the shared ways of thinking and behaving, to common attitudes and beliefs that a social community shares, and to the products the social community has created (Kramsch, 1995). In management organizational literature ‘culture’ is used to indicate the internal cohesion of organizations whose members share espoused values and basic assumptions (Schein, 1992). The concept of ‘culture’ is currently applied broadly to refer to, depict and characterize sets of shared beliefs and modes of practice in diverse areas, including in the sphere of education (e.g., ‘learning cultures’; ‘school culture’) and educational assessment. Hence the relatively novel term in both general educational and language assessment domains—‘assessment culture’. Assessment culture refers to educational evaluation practices that are compatible with current ideologies, social expectations, attitudes and values. It is grounded in and shaped by constructivist theories about how knowledge is developed and processed, critically acknowledges the social role of assessment and values its vital contribution to the teaching-learning process (Broadfood and Black, 2004). Though initially coined as a reaction to testing cultures, assessment cultures presently refer to broader theoretical and practical frameworks for assessing knowledge. Assessment data are collected via multiple tools from various micro and macro sources, with stakeholders taking an active part in the assessment process (Shepard, 2000). Similar beliefs and practices have recently permeated the language assessment field. These developments signify a move in the field of ‘language testing’ towards a broader assessment framework encompassing areas that have hitherto received little voice in the language testing literature. This is particularly apparent with regard to classroom and formative assessment (see Rea-Dickins, Classroom-based Language Assessment, Volume 7), and how they interact with external assessment measures. The review will commence with a description of the concept of ‘assessment culture’ as it has transpired over the last decade or so in general education paradigms, followed by its recent emergence in the E. Shohamy and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 7: Language Testing and Assessment, 285–299. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
286
OFRA INBAR-LOURIE
area of language assessment. It will then illustrate the implementation of the concept in a number of language assessment contexts with a brief focus on research on the role of language teachers in assessment cultures. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S
As cultures are grounded in the macro- and micro-levels of society (Cole, 1996), the emergence of assessment cultures needs to be discussed with reference t
Data Loading...
