Item writing skills and their development: Implications for operational item writing and item-writing training

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Tests are normally composed of items (questions), the quality of which has direct impact upon the test's validity. However, very little is known about the nature of item-writing and how the skills of producing test items are acquired by the people who write them: item writers. Therefore, the overarching aim of my doctoral study was to investigate the nature of item-writing skills and the patterns of their development during an induction item-writing training course. This study has made several important theoretical and practical contributions to the advancement of the knowledge about item writing: it provided insights into the nature of item-writing skills, it detailed the cognitive processes behind item-writing skill acquisition, and it provided insights into the socially-situated nature of item-writing skill development. From a practical perspective, the study resulted in a range of specific recommendations as to how the training of item writers can be organised more optimally.The findings gleaned from my study have great potential for wider interest and dissemination. An ESRC fellowship, should my application be successful, will allow me to disseminate this study's findings through conference presentations and publications, making the findings known to the global academic and language testing community. The practical recommendations for item writing and training item writers will be disseminated in a series of impact events for educational professionals, as outlined in the objectives. The audience for the impact events will include professional language testers, classroom language teachers with testing responsibilities, and teacher educators. The wide outreach will be achieved by conducting three country-level impact events (workshops/webinars conducted in the UK, Austria and Ukraine), one Europe-level event (a three-day pre-conference workshop conducted in Helsinki for the European Association of Language Testing and Assessment) and one global event (a webinar hosted by the British Council). Furthermore, to ensure that the dissemination has sustained impact, I will develop and maintain a website that will be freely accessible to all interested individuals. This website will contain practical guides and short video presentations formulating targeted recommendations for language test item writing and item-writing training. The website will be publicised through professional networks and language teaching/testing associations around the globe.My doctoral study was necessarily limited to investigating the development of item-writing skills during an induction training course, which left any skill development that might have occurred after the training unexplored. A longitudinal study to investigate how item-writing skills develop beyond initial training is my long-term research goal. To this end, I would make use of the postdoctoral fellowship period to develop a grant proposal to secure research funding for such a study. Being part of Lancaster University will allow me to gain new skills and competencies in developing research funding applications through training programmes available for Lancaster University research staff. I will also work closely with my mentor, Prof. Luke Harding, to discuss specific strategies for grant writing. Having developed my funding application skills, I will seek funding opportunities to advance my research into item writing. By the end of the Fellowship, I will submit at least one funding proposal, in the first instance, to the Leverhulme Trust. Should my application be unsuccessful, I will seek further funding opportunities by submitting funding applications to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and smaller-scale funders such as the British Council Assessment Research Grants.