Testing to Learn--Learning to Test - Softcover

Capper, Joanne

9780872071452: Testing to Learn--Learning to Test

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0872071456 ISBN 13: 9780872071452

Publisher: Intl Literacy Assn, 1996

This book describes a new view of the role of examinations and assessments in relation to teaching and learning in developing countries. It highlights dramatic changes occurring worldwide in the design and use of testing systems, and it addresses the interaction between testing and teaching.Based on recent international research and classroom experience, Testing to Learn -- Learning to Test describes how to develop, score, and interpret tests to ensure that they are valid, reliable, and fair to all children.Educational policymakers, administrators, and classroom teachers will gain valuable insight from the discussions and examples detailed in this book. Copublished with the Academy for Educational Development.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Joanne Capper has extensive experience conducting policy research and evaluation studies and providing technical assistance in the area of examination reform at international, national, state, and local levels for organizations such as the Academy for Educational Development, the United States Agency for International Development, the World Bank, and the California State Department of Education.

"Testing to Learn--Learning to Test" was written in response to a growing recognition in both developed and developing countries, that what is tested is what is taught in schools. Testing has assumed increasing importance worldwide because education has become the preeminent means for social mobility, an engine for economic growth, and the mechanism for inculcating a sense of national unity. Testing, as the "gateway" mechanism for students, and as a means for monitoring educational quality and efficiency of a nations schools, has increased in importance as education competes with other sectors for scarce public resources.

This book and the companion summary describe how examinations and national assessments can be used to encourage more pedagogically sound teaching and learning. Based on recent research and classroom experience, "Testing to Learn--Learning to Test" provides concrete examples of ways to measure student learning and describes how to develop, score, and interpret tests to ensure that they are valid, reliable, and fair to all children. It offers techniques and guidelines to increase the involvement of parents, teachers, and students in the use of tests to motivate and improve the educational system-not just judge it. These examples and guidelines are offered to educational policymakers, recognizing the many constraints within which educational systems in developing countries must operate.

Although the primary focus of the book is on formal systems of schooling, the discussions and examples, particularly those related to classroom-level testing and teacher training, are equally applicable to nonformal activities.

We hope that this work will reawaken educational policymakers to the importance of testing and will prompt a thoughtful reassessment of examinations and the contribution that national assessment systems can make to promoting educational quality. We hope that from this assessment will emerge new approaches to the involvement of government, parent, teachers, and students in education and its consequences.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.