ALTAANZ
  • About ALTAANZ
  • ALTAANZ Committee
    • Current Committee
    • 2021 Committee
    • 2020 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2018 - 2019 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2017 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2016 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2015 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2014 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2013 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2012 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2011 ALTAANZ Committee
  • Joining ALTAANZ
  • ALANZ - ALAA - ALTAANZ 2022
  • ALTAANZ Online Research Forum 2021
  • LTRC/ALTAANZ Online Celebratory event 2020
    • About the event
    • Event Programme
    • LTRC Anniversary Symposium
  • Past ALTAANZ Conferences
    • ALANZ / ALAA / ALTAANZ AUCKLAND 2017
    • ALTAANZ Conference Auckland 2016 >
      • Keynote Speakers >
        • Plenary Abstracts
      • Teachers' Day
      • Pre-conference workshops
      • Conference programme
    • ALTAANZ Conference Brisbane 2014
    • ALTAANZ Conference Sydney 2012
  • Past ALTAANZ / LTRC Workshops
    • LTRC / ALTAANZ Workshops July 2014 >
      • Test analysis for teachers
      • Diagnostic assessment in the language classroom
      • Responding to student writing
      • Assessing Pragmatics
      • Introduction to Rasch measurement
      • Introduction to many-facet Rasch measurement
    • LTRC / ALTAANZ workshops September 2015 >
      • A Practical Approach to Questionnaire Construction for Language Assessment Research
      • Integrating self- and peer-assessment into the language classroom
      • Implementing and assessing collaborative writing activities
      • Assessing Vocabulary
      • Revisiting language constructs
  • Studies in Language Assessment (formerly PLTA)
    • Early View Articles
    • Current Issue
    • About SiLA
    • Past Issues >
      • 2022
      • 2021
      • 2020
      • 2019
      • 2018
      • 2017
      • 2016
      • 2015
      • 2014
      • 2013
      • 2012
    • Editorial Board
    • Contributors
  • ALTAANZ Awards
    • ALTAANZ Best Student Paper Award
    • Penny McKay Award
    • PLTA Best Paper Award
  • Sponsorship for Educational Activities
  • Newsletter: Language Assessment Matters
  • Contact us
Negotiating the boundaries of responsibility: Rethinking test takers and the ethics of testing
Kellie Frost, University of Melbourne
https://doi/10.0000/0000
Volume 10, Issue 1, 2021
Abstract: While the importance of accounting for the use of tests as policy instruments is by now widely acknowledged, validation frameworks in language testing rest on core assumptions which, I argue, preclude consideration of the lived experiences and subjectivities of test takers, and of the intentions and purposeful actions these experiences and subjectivities engender. As a result, the complex and dynamic ways that test taker actions are implicated in generating test and policy consequences remain hidden from view, as do the ethical implications of the wider societal impacts of testing practices. Drawing on studies examining test taker experiences of the use of English testing for immigration purposes in the Australian context, I highlight the disconnect between how test takers, test users and language testers come to attribute meanings to testing practices in this complex policy setting, and the types of conflicting decisions and actions which then emerge. To conclude, I argue for a renewed criticality in language testing that extends beyond evaluations of how well, if at all, test uses align with the expectations of test users and/or language testers, to a focus on the expectations of test takers as the stakeholder group to whom we must be primarily accountable. This demands not only further research into the lived experiences of those subjected to testing practices, but also an engagement with the wider discursive space within which problems of language and of policy are imagined, and the ways in which language testing, as a discipline, is implicated in the production of idealised language users, workers, and citizens, together with the various exclusions these entail.
Keywords: skilled migration, language policy, test takers, test impact, critical language testing
Click to download Full Text