了解课堂语言评估难度,提高教师语言评估素养

A Difficulty-Informed Approach to Developing Language Assessment Literacy for Classroom Purposes

在职前教师教育过程中,了解语言测试和评估某些方面的难度对学生来说会很有帮助。这些信息可以服务于不同的教学目的,包括课程设计和上课顺序。本文以奥地利维也纳大学的职前教师教育为背景,提出了一种考虑课堂语言评估的难度从而提高语言评估素养(LAL)的方法。为了得到难度估计实证数据,将职前英语教师LAL测试的项目转换为对能力、知识和理解的陈述,然后根据420名学生的表现数据通过多面Rasch分析进行校准。定性内容分析用于识别校准之间的聚类,从而分出难度等级。研究结果显示了清晰的等级级数,可以为教师教育计划的制定提供依据。本文首先报告了测评课堂语言评估难度的过程,然后描述了课堂语言评估的难度等级。最后,笔者提出了基于难度等级的课堂语言评估类课程的设计原则,并介绍了笔者在维也纳大学的教师教育计划中实施这些原则的具体实践。

For pre-service teacher education,it would be helpful to know how difficult certain aspects of language testing and assessment are for students.Such information could serve different pedagogical purposes including program design and lesson sequencing.This paper,situated in the context of pre-service teacher education at the University of Vienna,Austria,presents an approach to developing language assessment literacy(LAL)which takes account of the difficulty of language assessment.To obtain empirical difficulty estimates,the items of a LAL test for pre-service teachers of English were converted into statements of ability,knowledge,and understanding and then calibrated by means of multi-facet Rasch analysis based on performance data from 420 students.Qualitative content analysis was used to identify clusters among the calibrations,thus characterizing the difficulty continuum.The findings show a clear progression which can offer a basis for the design of teacher education programs.I first report on the process of generating the difficulty estimates.Then I describe the resulting difficulty continuum with particular emphasis on classroom-based assessment.Finally,I suggest design principles for difficulty-informed assessment courses,illustrating how they could be implemented in the teacher education program at the University of Vienna.