From 1983 until 2011 Grade 12 students in the Canadian province of British Columbia were required to write provincial exams in a wide variety of academic subjects, including Biology 12, Chemistry 12, and Physics 12. These government-administered exams may be considered “high stakes” in that they counted for 40% of a student’s mark, were used in part to determine post-secondary admissions and scholarships, and the publicly-available exam results were used in highly publicized school “ranking” systems. A large volume of research literature suggests high stakes exams of this nature dictate the manner in which courses are delivered as teachers feel obliged to “teach to the test” in order to maximize the grades students receive on these exams. A major gap in the literature appears to be an examination of the effects on teacher behaviours and practices when a long-standing high-stakes testing program is eliminated. The decision made by the British Columbia Ministry of Education to remove provincial exams in secondary science at the Grade 12 level in August of 2011 created a unique and original opportunity to examine teacher pedagogical practices following the removal of subject-specific exams. Specifically, the question considered in this investigation centred upon the effect(s) the elimination of provincial exams in Biology 12, Chemistry 12, and Physics 12 had on the pedagogy and work environment of teachers in one British Columbia school district. This investigation followed case study methodology. The primary source of data was interviews with teachers who had experience teaching the three aforementioned courses in both the time of mandatory exams and following exam elimination. Interviews were semi-structured and focussed on the effects of the removal of Grade 12 exams on teacher pedagogy and general practices, classroom resource and time allocation, relations with colleagues, perceived student responses to courses, and exam data usage. The findings from this research suggest that, contrary to popular discourse, exam-generated data is not a valuable pedagogical resource for teachers and a high-stakes exam is not required to ensure full curricular coverage by teachers. In fact, the results suggest the opposite: curricular coverage is enhanced in the absence of a high-stakes exam. Further, not having to spend classroom and external time preparing students for exams has allowed teachers to implement and explore a greater diversity of pedagogical avenues not utilized during the time of exams. Teachers also spoke of reduced pressures in the absence of an exam. Finally, findings of this investigation suggest the presence of an exam greatly affected the way teachers both assessed and motivated students, effects that continue to have repercussions following elimination of provincial exams. / Graduate

The use of unproctored internet-based testing for employee selection is widespread. Although this mode of testing has advantages over onsite testing, researchers and practitioners continue to be concerned about potential malfeasance (e.g., cheating and response distortion) under high-stakes conditions. Therefore, the primary objective of the present study was to investigate potential malfeasance effects on the scores of an unproctored internet-based cognitive ability, and a personality test. This was accomplished by implementing a within-subjects design in which test takers first completed the tests as job applicants (high-stakes) or incumbents (low-stakes) then as research participants (low-stakes). The pattern of cognitive ability test score differences was more consonant with a psychometric practice effect than a malfeasance explanation. Thus, the results suggest that, if present, there was no evidence to indicate that wide- scale or systematic malfeasance unduly affected the test scores. This may have been due to the speeded nature of the test, which was used to preempt the potential for widespread cheating. Additionally, the unproctored personality administration resulted in similar mean shifts and similar proportions of test takers being suspected of distorting their responses as that reported in the extant literature for proctored tests. In their totality, these results suggest that an unproctored internet-based administration does not uniquely threaten personality measures in terms of elevated levels of response distortion compared to proctored measures.

Den Gemensamma Europeiska Referensramen för Språk (GERS) har haft en betydande inverkan påutvärderingen av språkkunskaper i Europa. Denna studie fokuserar på två nationellaspråkfärdighetstester med avgörande konsekvenser för testtagarna, vilkas utfärdade GERS-nivå kananvändas för antagning till utbildningsprogram, medborgarskap och certifiering i två olika europeiskaländer: CILS i Italien och Swedex i Sverige. Det som testerna avser testa och hur deras innehållåterspeglar detta analyseras i relation till GERS standardnivåer. I analysen fokuseras på inferensernaEvaluation och Explanation i Kanes (1992, 2002, 2013) och Chapelles m. fl. (2008, 2021)tolkningsargument (interpretative argument) som utgörs av sju olika inferenser som används för attanalysera de antaganden som görs om testtagarens språknivå vid tolkning av testresultat ochutvärdering av språktesters användbarhet (figur 1, s. 9, bilaga 2). Resultaten används som en del avett större validitetsargument för språktester kopplade till GERS för att underbygga antaganden omtesternas konstrukt och innehållsrelaterade validitet och konsekvenserna av testernas användning.Den genomgripande frågeställningen är hur den europeiska referensramen tillämpas mellan olikaspråkfärdighetstester och huruvida användningen av en gemensam referensram leder till en jämliktolkning och tillämpning av GERS standardnivåer och en rättvis europeisk språkbedömning. Genomanalysen utkristalliserar sig testernas starka och svaga punkter i relation till grunddokumentet GERS,och vilka sociala konsekvenser testernas användning kan medföra. Resultaten visar att testernauppvisar bristande innehållsvaliditet inom de undersökta områdena, samt att det förekommer faktorersom ligger utanför de konstrukt som testerna avser testa, vilka kan påverka testtagarens testprestation.