This study is concerned with transparency, accessibility and accountability as
regulative conditions for a postgraduate test of academic literacy. What it will
propose to do is investigate how these can be incorporated into the design of
one test, the Test of Academic Literacy for Postgraduate Students (TALPS),
and theoretically accounted for in terms of a framework.
A main focus is to show that the questions raised here about the social
dimension of language testing cannot be adequately answered by experts in the
field like Messick (1989b; 1996), Bachman and Palmer (1996), and Kunnan
(2000; 2004). Instead these questions can be answered in a âthird idea, other
than validity and usefulnessâ (Weideman 2009a: 239), as outlined by
Weideman, an idea that does not foreground one concept but rather identifies a
number of fundamental considerations for language testing. The argument here
is that construct and other empirically based forms of validity are not enough
to validate a language test and that what is needed, in addition, is a detailed
look at issues of transparency, accessibility and accountability.
This study begins by contextualising the problem of poor academic literacy
and outlining the need for academic literacy tests such as the Test of Academic
Literacy Levels (TALL) and TALPS. This is followed by an in-depth study of
previous work in the field of language testing. The literature on key concepts
such as validity, reliability, accessibility, transparency and accountability is
surveyed as well. An important part of this study is telling the story of TALPS
from its initial conceptualisation to its final implementation. Included in this is
a detailed study of the reliability and validity of the test, taking the form of a
validation argument. Subsequent chapters (5, 6 and 7) focus specifically on issues of transparency,
accessibility and accountability as they relate to TALPS. This study would not
be complete without the voices of the test takers. A detailed summary of the
data collected from a questionnaire administered to students who wrote TALPS
is offered as well. The questionnaire has been designed to elicit information,
comments, questions and reactions from the testees about the test.
The final chapter in this study will attempt to provide a summary of the
answers to the important questions that have been asked and answered in the
course of this investigation. It will also consider the link between transparency,
accessibility and accountability, and will focus briefly on other conditions in
the framework that contribute to the design of fair and socially acceptable tests.
This study hopes to make a contribution to the field of language testing by
concentrating on an area of testing that has been largely ignored â the social
dimension. One of the aims of this study is to show the complementarity
among the empirical, social and ethical dimensions of TALPS. It therefore
provides a framework that incorporates a concern for the empirical analyses of
a test as well as a concern for the social dimensions of language testing. Test
developers are challenged to consider important questions related to every
aspect of the test, leading to the design of fair, accessible tests that are designed
by test developers who are willing to be accountable for their designs.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-08272013-124635 |
| Date | 27 August 2013 |
| Creators | Rambiritch, Avasha |
| Contributors | Dr SI Brokensha, Prof AJ Weideman |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-08272013-124635/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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