We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Good Reasons for Bad Testing Performance: The Interactional Substrate of Educational Exams.
- Authors
Maynard, Douglas W.; Marlaire, Courtney L.
- Abstract
The article presents information on the educational exams for testing children's knowledge. Videotapes and transcripts of actual exam episodes show that each part of a testing sequence is assembled in the socially organized interaction between examiner and examinee. The article focuses on a technique called blending. The blending subtest involves the clinician breaking up words into components and speaking them to the child, whereupon the child must reconstitute the sounds as the appropriate word. According to the test manual, the purpose is to measure a child's ability to verbalize whole words after hearing syllabic and phonemic components the examiner presents sequentially. The subtest by itself does not determine how clinicians will assess the child's ability; rather, the blending score, along with those from other subtests, becomes part of a cluster that indicates broad cognitive ability and reading aptitude. The article refers to the interactional substrate of educational testing as consisting of those skills of the clinician and child that allow them to arrive at an accountable test score. By accountable test score, we mean one that is taken as objective, verifiable, valid, properly-achieved, and so on, where that achievement depends upon an organization of concerted practical actions that constitutes the participants' interaction.
- Subjects
EXAMINATIONS; EDUCATIONAL tests &; measurements; TEST scoring; VIDEO tapes; MIXING; VOCABULARY
- Publication
Qualitative Sociology, 1992, Vol 15, Issue 2, p177
- ISSN
0162-0436
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/BF00989493