Fairness in Language

testingLiz_Hamp Lyons

© Fariba Chamani, 2015

The purpose of study

To show personal reflections of the author about what constitutes fairness, more specifically, it discusses fairness from the point of view of different stakeholders in the business of language testing.

The author also takes a critical approach about her own work as a language testing professional from the standpoint of fairness. This provides a great example of critical and reflective testing.

Definition of fairness

Which fairness do you mean?

It’s difficult to provide a precise definition of fairness because there is no one single standpoint from which a test can be viewed as fair or unfair. What sounds to be fair to students might be considered as unfair to parents, teachers or policy makers.

types of fairness

Fairness for students or learners Fairness for teachers Fairness for raters Fairness for parents Fairness for the rest of society

Fairness for learners

Since there is no a single dominant model of testing, the students should be free to choose test and item types that best match their own learning profile. To do so, there should be tests in multiple forms.

If the learners are to be judged by their teachers, the teachers themselves also should be tested to ensure that they apply the appropriate criteria & standards to learners in class.

Fairness for teachers

Teachers are not the same and they have their own personalities, views , styles and strategies. They should be free to teach and assess students according to their own personal style. Thus, tests would need to exist in multiple forms so that the teachers could select a unique appropriate way that is fair both for teachers and their students.

Fairness for raters

Raters have their own individuality, philosophies, and beliefs, and they should not be forced to left them behind when they want to rate. They should be free to rate according to their own rating styles and strategies. Therefore, multiple scoring alternatives should exist so that each rater can select a unique, appropriate approach to scoring that would be fair to him.

Fairness for parents

Parents know the needs and problems of their children best of all and they want to know what happens in school, it is not fair if they are kept away from the process of teaching, learning and testing at school. Thus they should be able to take part in test design and to be trained as raters of tests.

Fairness for others

Tests should be fair to other stakeholders (taxpayers, Education department officials, big businesses, political parties, and governments) as well. They have their own concerns and we should listen to all these voices.

conclusion

There is more than one fairness and judging what is fair is not so simple but we need to recognize this and do our best to care about all the fairness that we, as language testers, must be accountable for.

Fairness = Equal Freedom for all