Fairness Versus Justice in Language Testing: The Place of English Literacy in the Australian Citizenship Test

Abstract

This article proposes a distinction between fairness and justice in relation to language tests. Basing its discussion on the validity theory of Samuel Messick, it discusses the way in which these terms have been used in the existing literature, and their relationship to the concept of validity. Fairness, broadly speaking, refers to the technical quality of the test; justice encompasses the values implicit in test constructs, and the social uses to which language tests may be put. It illustrates the potential usefulness of the distinction by discussing the growing international practice of the use of language tests within citizenship procedures, and considers in detail the introduction of a formal citizenship test in Australia by a conservative government in the context of growing public anxiety about security, and about cultural diversity within the Australian population.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The terminological distinction which is the subject of this article was first suggested in discussion with Henry Widdowson following a presentation by the first author at the University of Vienna in 2008 on the social and political dimension of language testing, with particular reference to language tests for citizenship. In that sense it is a characteristically Widdowsonian distinction, and we are extremely grateful to him for the suggestion and the clarification of our thinking that it has led to. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of the first draft of this article for their challenging insights into the issues canvassed here.

Notes

¹ Wierzbicka (2006) has an interesting discussion of the word fair, stressing its Anglo-Saxon peculiarity and how it is to be distinguished from justice; she argued that many languages do not make this distinction, translating “fair” as “just.”

²New provisions included the citizenship test requirement, as well as an increase in the pre-citizenship application residency requirement from 2 years to 4 years, effectively doubling the period in which non-citizens can be deported.

³The pass rate of 82% on first or second attempt for Humanitarian program entrants (refugees) was well below those of the other categories of test takers, skilled migrants (99%) and family stream migrants (91%; Commonwealth of Australia, 2009).

⁴The phrase “under God” is optional.

⁵For example, U.S. law states that “no person . . . shall be naturalized as a citizen of the United States upon his own petition who cannot demonstrate an understanding of the English language, including an ability to read, write and speak words in ordinary usage in the English language” (8 U.S.C. § 1423 (1964), as cited in Leibowitz, 1969, p. 13).