CURRENT ISSUES IN CLASSROOM TESTING

CURRENT ISSUES IN CLASSROOM TESTING The design of communicative, performance-based assessment continues to challenge both assessment experts and classroom teachers. There‟re three issues which are helping to shape our current understanding of effective assessment. These are: · The effect of new theories of intelligence on the testing industry · The advent of what has come to be called “alternative assessment” The increasing popularity of computer-based testing New Views on Intelligence In the past: Intelligence was once viewed strictly as the ability to perform linguistic and logical-mathematical problem solving. For many years, we‟ve lived in a word of standardized, norm-referenced tests that are timed in a multiple-choice format consisting of a multiplicity of logic constrained items, many of which are inauthentic. We were relying on timed, discrete-point, analytical tests in measuring lang. We were forced to be in the limits of objectivity and give impersonal responds.