Did we take the same test? Differing accounts of the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test by first and second language test‐takers

Janna D. Fox · Liying Cheng

73 citations0/0 files storedAssessment in Education Principles Policy and Practice

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning Multilingual Education and Policy Student Assessment and Feedback

Abstract

Within the context of increasing numbers of second language (L2) learners in Canadian schools and expanding standards‐driven testing frameworks, a passing score on the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) is a recently imposed secondary school graduation requirement in Ontario. There is evidence, however, that tests designed on the basis of first language (L1) populations may have lower reliability and validity for L2 students. This study elicited accounts of the OSSLT in 33 focus groups of 22 L1 students and 136 L2 students, attending 7 Ontario secondary schools, prior to and immediately after the March 2006 test administration. The results suggest important differences in L1 and L2 accounts of test constructs and suggest a gap between what is valued as literacy on the test and what is valued in classroom literacy practice, raising some concern regarding the test’s consequential validity. By examining how different groups of test‐takers interpret test constructs and the interaction between these interpretations, test design, and accounts of classroom practice, we may better address issues of fidelity in test construct representation (i.e., understand what may constitute construct under‐representation and construct‐irrelevant variance). This study highlights what may make a test more L2‐friendly, i.e. what supports (or impedes) L2 test performance. Although in the washback literature test‐taker accounts of tests have been the least researched, the results of this study suggest that such accounts have the potential to increase test fairness, enhance the validity of inferences drawn from test performance, improve the effectiveness of accommodation strategies, and promote positive washback.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 73 citations exist upstream.

References

1992Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques.1993Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques 2021The educational researcher 1988Correlates, Causes, Effects, and Treatment of Test Anxiety 1952Educational Measurement 1957Objective Tests as Instruments of Psychological Theory 1994The Interplay of Evidence and Consequences in the Validation of Performance Assessments 1996Validity and washback in language testing

Cited by

2015Review of washback research literature within Kane's argument-based validation framework 2011Voices From Test-Takers: Further Evidence for Language Assessment Validation and Use 2019Critical review of validation models and practices in language testing: their limitations and future directions for validation research 2009Differential Functioning of Reading Subskills on the OSSLT for L1 and ELL Students: A Multidimensionality Model‐Based DBF/DIF Approach 2007Student Accounts of the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test: A Case for Validation

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.