Testing like you teach The challenge of constructing local…测试像你教导建设本地的挑战.pdfVIP

English Teaching: Practice and Critique December, 2008, Volume 7, Number 3 http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/files/etpc/2008v7n3art2.pdf pp. 10-25 Testing like you teach: The challenge of constructing local, ecologically valid tests DAVID WHITEHEAD University of Waikato ABSTRACT: In an educational context, local, ecologically valid tests can reflect the use of literacy and thinking tools. These tests present a challenge to central, content- focused, high-stakes testing, and to transmission approaches to teaching. They require teachers to accept knowledge as a verb, and to design assessment protocols that reflect co-constructive ways of teaching. This article reports the outcome of praxis action research with middle and secondary school teachers who incorporated topic-appropriate literacy and thinking tools into their teaching. They also redesigned their local tests linked to high-stakes test protocols to reflect the use of these tools. A thematic analysis of observations and interviews suggests that this process impacted on the structural characteristics (morés) of the schools, and posed affective, cognitive and pedagogical challenges to teachers. KEYWORDS: Ecologically valid, tests, literacy, teaching PROLOGUE There was one thing that, as a secondary school student, I could guarantee would happen in February. While summer holiday memories of bleached whalebones and bronzed bodies in bikinis were still fresh in my adolescent mind, I could guarantee there would be central, standardized tests of vocabulary and reading comprehension. My sensory memory is still filled with the smell of waxed floors, and sweaty bodi