Thesis advisor: Marilyn Cochran-Smith / The purpose of this study was to understand beginning teachers’ experiences with learning to teach in an educational system that puts intense pressure on teachers to prepare students for standardized tests. The situation is common in many developed and developing countries whose educational systems are run by policies grounded in neoliberal and human capital ideologies. Using a phenomenological research design, I explored teachers’ experiences in two very different educational systems, the United States and South Korea, and focused on the commonalities and differences of their experiences of learning to teach. I recruited four secondary-school teachers (two English and two mathematics) who had been teaching fewer than three years from each country. I conducted a series of three phenomenological interviews with each teacher in his or her native language, following the guidelines set out by Irving Seidman (2012). My analysis suggested that, although there were many differences between US and Korean teachers’ lived experiences in the context of test-based accountability, the groups were primarily similar. Both novice teachers in the United States and Korea faced significant conflicts between their prior beliefs about good teaching and the educational system that demanded them to teach to tests. All teachers in this study described experiencing various levels of frustration with having to teach to the tests, which was not their preferred approach to teaching. While struggling to meet the demands of their test-based accountability systems, the beginning teachers in this study established firm student-centered beliefs and strived to integrate practices that were consistent with their beliefs. The findings suggest that support in the form of policies and teacher education is necessary to promote teachers’ constant learning and growth in the challenging context of test-based accountability. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This literature review asks the following:  How is writing instruction realized in L1-classrooms (in the Swedish upper secondary school or its equivalent globally), considering standardized testing as a background factor? Standardized testing has become established in Sweden as one way to audit the school system and evaluate knowledge levels for the sake of guaranteeing an equitable education. However, standardized testing may influence the way in which classroom instruction is realized by teachers, as observed by Popham (2001). The literature review utilizes a qualitative conventional content analysis in order to produce a result of ten studies relevant to our research question. They are then thematized, presented, and later discussed using Popham’s (2001) item-teaching and curriculum-teaching, Biesta’s (2010) reasoning around how measurability impacts the perceived value of different types of education and Janks’ (2010) synthesis model. We found that writing instruction in classrooms subjected to standardized testing often showed a narrowed curriculum and formulaic writing. This particularly impacted classrooms consisting of diverse learners. We noted that teachers faced a complex task when instructing in these classrooms. They generally drifted towards either item-teaching or curriculum-teaching. We also found that the writing skills and knowledge that were highly valued in the classroom corresponded to skills measured by the tests. Finally, using Janks’ (2010) synthesis model we found that both access without design and diversity without access were present in our chosen studies. This implies that standardized testing maintains existing (and excluding) power relations between the dominant and the non-dominant groups. Our discussion is then related to the Swedish national curriculum, pointing to potential self-refuting goals formulated in the syllabus for the subject Swedish. We suggest that studies should be performed in a Swedish context in order to highlight any potential consequences of standardized testing for writing instruction in Swedish classrooms.

When the Swedish school system met with the novel experience of cancelled the annual national tests in spring 2020, teachers across the country were forced to adapt to teaching without this traditional support. Due to English being one of the subjects required to administer national tests, upper secondary school English teachers were immediately affected. By looking at several studies regarding standardised testing in general, and Swedish national test tradition specifically, this qualitative study summarises how large-scale assessment in education affects teaching.Through semi-structured interviews with three English teachers, this study surveyed how teaching was affected by the cancellation of the national tests in Sweden. The teachers’ experiences of teaching without the supportive function of the national tests were also documented. The recorded interviews were analysed through the theoretical framework of reactivity, and specifically, Campbell’s Law. This study’s findings are that while the national tests hold a critical support function for teachers, they may also inhibit English teachers from teaching what is specified in the English curriculum. What emerged from the collected data and subsequent analysis was teachers’ fractured role as dependent on performance standards-based on test criteria rather than the content standards in the English curriculum. The interviewed teachers showed a great deal of trust in the national tests as grounds for assessing their students’ English skills, occasionally at the cost of their faith in themselves as teachers. Counterproductively, this resulted in teachers, consciously or not, adapting their teaching practices to fit the predicted national test rather than the curriculum. Essentially, teachers had changed their behaviour to accommodate an observer, as theorized by Campbell. During the 2020 spring semester when national tests were cancelled in Sweden, and English teachers all over the nation had to make do without their supporting function, this was made clear.