Rethinking alternative assessment
Rethinking alternative assessment
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重新思考替代评估
DOI：
10.1177/026553220101800401
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发表时间：
2001
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
T. McNamara
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
T. McNamara
本期《语言测试》特刊最初是应邀于2000年3月在温哥华举行的美国应用语言学协会会议上召开的关于另类评估的座谈会。据我理解，“另类评估”指的是一种运动，尤其是在美国的学校环境中，它不再使用标准化的多项选择题，而是支持更复杂的基于表现的评估。我决定更广泛地将邀请解释为一个简短的论坛，为工作提供一个论坛，在理论和实践层面上为当前语言测试研究的主流提供替代方案或挑战。多年来，我越来越赞同这样一种观点，即太多的语言测试研究是关于高风险的水平测试，忽视了课堂环境，专注于使用技术复杂的量化方法来提高测试质量，而牺牲了更容易为非专家所接受的方法。我对语言测试研究主流之外的事情(当然，我和我在墨尔本的同事们都是一个全心全意的参与者)的兴趣进一步激起了我的兴趣，因为人们正在从社会批评或后现代的角度对应用语言学的许多工作进行知识分子批评；语言测试研究似乎是这种批判性反思的明显目标。我的同事阿拉斯泰尔·彭尼库克和布莱恩·林奇出现在我的部门，以及我与我的朋友埃拉娜·肖哈米的持续交流，加速了这种兴趣的增长。我这种认识转变的最终结果是召开了一次专题讨论会，在这里还补充了另外两篇论文，这些论文的范围相当不同，但具有以下一种或两种特征：
The origins of this special issue of Language Testing initially lay in an invitation to convene a colloquium on alternative assessment at the American Association for Applied Linguistics conference in Vancouver, in March 2000. ‘Alternative assessment’ was a term I understood as referring to a movement, particularly in school contexts in the USA, away from the use of standardized multiple-choice tests in favour of more complex performance-based assessments. I decided to interpret the invitation more broadly as a brief to provide a forum for work which was providing alternatives or challenges to the current mainstream in language testing research both at the level of theory and at the level of practice. Over the years I have become more sympathetic to the viewpoint that too much language testing research is about high-stakes proficiency testing, ignoring classroom contexts, and focusing on the use of technically sophisticated quantitative methods to improve the quality of tests at the expense of methods more accessible to non-experts. My interest in matters outside the mainstream of language testing research (within which I have of course been, along with my colleagues in Melbourne, a wholehearted participant) has been further piqued by the ongoing intellectual critique of much work in applied linguistics from a socially critical or postmodern perspective; language testing research seems an obvious target for such critical reflection. The presence in my department of my colleagues Alastair Pennycook and Brian Lynch, and my ongoing exchanges with my friend Elana Shohamy, hastened the growth of this interest. The net result of this changed awareness on my part was a symposium featuring papers, here supplemented by two others, that were rather diverse in scope but which had either or both of the following characteristics: