Assessment for the course was based on three extremely tough sit-down examinations as well as a term paper. At the very beginning of the course, O’Grady explicitly justified his use of examinations by saying that we were future teachers of linguistics and so we needed to know the material in detail. I happen to disagree with this argument, and under other circumstances I might have polemicized with O’Grady; but I was very favorably impressed with the fact that the professor had questioned his own assessment procedures and had made decisions about how to evaluate the students not out of an unthinking adherence to custom but out of a conviction (I would further suggest, a moral conviction) that it was the good and right thing to do, and furthermore, that he respected his students as thinking adults enough to explain his position to them. This brings me to another key component of our role as teachers in determining assessment procedures. All educational work is fundamentally rooted in context. In the case of assessment, then, I suggest that we have an ongoing moral duty to interrogate the context in which assessment is being used, in order to determine what is the good and right way to proceed with these particular learners at this particular point in their learning. In the case of Professor O’Grady, a key element in the equation were the needs of the students in their coming professional lives: His learners were all doctoral students in linguistics, and so the examination format was, in his view, appropriate. In any given case, this equation will be a complex one, including the future needs of students, their expectations, the nature of what is being assessed (vocabulary? writing skills? communicative ability?), systemic requirements, cultural preferences, and so on. Moreover, calling the decision-making process an equation is also inaccurate, because in reality the weighing of many factors is nearly always done in a holistic and flexible way. It is equally important to interrogate the nature and ostensible and real purpose of existing tests: that is, to take what Shohamy (1998), after Pennycook (1994) and others, called a “critical” approach to language testing. According to Shohamy, among other things such a stance:
• “views language tests as…deeply embedded in cultural, educational, and political arenas where different ideological and social forms struggle for dominance” (p. 332);
• “asks questions about what sort of agendas are delivered through tests and whose agendas they are” (p. 332);
• “challenges psychometric traditions and considers interpretive ones” (p. 332);
• “asks questions about whose knowledge the tests are based on,” including whether what is included in tests can be “negotiated, challenged and appropriated” (p. 333);
• suggests that “the notion of ‘just a test’ is an impossibility because it is impossible to separate language testing from the many contexts in which it operates” (p. 333). 77 Values in English Language Teaching The one key word that Shohamy (1998) did not use, although she implies it in all the foregoing, is value. What values are enshrined in, or presupposed by, the kinds of tests we use and the ways in which we use them?
• “views language tests as…deeply embedded in cultural, educational, and political arenas where different ideological and social forms struggle for dominance” (p. 332);
• “asks questions about what sort of agendas are delivered through tests and whose agendas they are” (p. 332);
• “challenges psychometric traditions and considers interpretive ones” (p. 332);
• “asks questions about whose knowledge the tests are based on,” including whether what is included in tests can be “negotiated, challenged and appropriated” (p. 333);
• suggests that “the notion of ‘just a test’ is an impossibility because it is impossible to separate language testing from the many contexts in which it operates” (p. 333). 77 Values in English Language Teaching The one key word that Shohamy (1998) did not use, although she implies it in all the foregoing, is value. What values are enshrined in, or presupposed by, the kinds of tests we use and the ways in which we use them?
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