Many candidates undertaking high-stakes English language proficiency tests for academic enrolment do not achieve the results they need for reasons including linguistic unreadiness, test unpreparedness, illness, an unfavourable configuration of tasks, or administrative and marking errors. Owing to the importance of meeting goals or out of a belief…

As preparation for the rhetoric and composition job market becomes more readily available through multiple sources, some cover letter writers may need clarification on the well-meaning but perhaps conflicting responses to writing given to them by mentors from differing backgrounds, statuses, and epistemes. This article seeks to illuminate the…

In 2019, Drew H. Gitomer, Dan Battey, and José Felipe Martínez published a paper detailing apparent violations of fundamental principles and norms in the reporting of technical information about the edTPA, a widely used high-stakes assessment for teacher licensure. In this article, they describe and criticize the lack of appropriate response to…

In the 21st century, with the rise of the popularity of standardized or large-scale tests, their high-stakes have started to be apparent. High-stake tests are not new, but in most cases, their current use as social practice tends to shape individuals' futures. Currently the new trend for their quality discussion aims to critically evaluate tests…

The Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) is a system of standardized portfolio assessments of teaching performance mandated for use by educator preparation programs in 18 states, and approved in 21 others, as part of initial certification for preservice teachers. Because of the high stakes involved for examinees, it is critical that…

This paper is a re-examination of Louise Rosenblatt's seminal work of reader-response theory, The Reader, The Text, The Poem. I argue that poems are essentially social in nature and that they open up a space in which conversation and interpretation can take place. With Rosenblatt I argue that until a reader engages with a poem, bringing to it a…

In responding to John Raven's critique of the current situation in education and the role of evidence-based interventions, there are a number of observations that Steve Higgins makes, but he starts by supporting Raven's key argument about the damage that high stakes accountability has done to the system of teaching and assessment in schools. This…

The number of individuals undertaking IELTS has continued to grow in recent years, standing at approximately 3 million candidates per year in 2016. As a result, this high-stakes, high-pressure test has become firmly entrenched as a global gatekeeping institution, regulating the international flows of people for migration and academic study. This…

This article seeks to clarify the purpose of high-stakes exam and its relationship with teaching and learning by elucidating the educational thought of the eminent neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi. The paper contends that Zhu Xi views standardised testing as an essential means to evaluate the learning outcomes, honour exemplary scholars and select…

In this article, two government education policies for primary schools in England are scrutinised, the Phonics Screening Check and Baseline Assessment, both claimed by ministers to be 'evidence based'. What has become a high-stakes test rather than a diagnostic assessment, the Phonics Screening Check, introduced in 2012, now dominates early years…

This essay draws on the work of Raymond Williams in identifying a shift from the attempt to have students engage with literary texts in personal terms to a concern, founded on theoretical innovation, that they should read at a more sophisticated level in order to discern the ideology of a given text. It argues that what Williams calls an…

As a post-structural critique of US teacher evaluation policy, this paper aims to disrupt accepted conceptualizations of teachers by (1) identifying discursive constructions of teachers in political talk, action, and legislation; (2) unpacking the ways that these constructions operate to legitimize punitive accountability policies and practices;…

This article explores how critical pedagogy unfolds in the everyday interactions between teachers and students. Specifically, Freirean constructs of critique and dialogue were explored in two key literacy events drawn from an ethnographically informed case study of one fourth-grade classroom. The events were first examined from an ethnographic…

This study takes a fine-grained look at the inaugural implementation of a high-stakes teacher performance assessment (the edTPA) from multiple perspectives and chronicles how participants used the reading, writing, and discussion of poetry to cope with and sometimes critique the edTPA. Teacher researchers sought to understand multiple perspectives…

In Nepal, the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) assessment taken by 16-year-olds at the end of Grade 10 of formal schooling performs a similar function to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examination in England in that it summarises individual, school, district and national achievement and acts as a filtering mechanism to the…