A Collaborative Approach to National Test Development

• With its conceptual basis in an extended view of validity, this chapter discusses the development process surrounding the extensive system of national summative tests and formative assessment materials for foreign languages in Sweden. The approach adopted in this work is collaborative and reciprocal, with systematic involvement of teachers, teacher educators, researchers within different fields, and, importantly, large numbers of students of different ages. On the basis of a brief outline of the educational and political context, the development process is described, from the theoretical and reasoning phase, through design, pre-testing and standard setting procedures, to various forms of research on outcomes. Examples are given of contributions from different stakeholders: teacher analyses of the comparability and equivalence of tests of different languages at the same level, feedback from students on various aspects of tasks, and structural equation modelling to increase understanding of the dimensionality of test results. With reference to EALTA’s Guidelines for Good Practice, it is argued that the same basic principles for Good Practice in Language Testing and Assessment apply to large-scale contexts as well as to continuous, small-scale assessment in classrooms.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Studier av enskilda språk (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- Specific Languages (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

validity

test development

collaboration

stakeholders

good practice

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kap (ämneskategori)