Democratic assessment as scales of justice: the case of three Iranian high-stakes tests

ABSTRACT

High-stakes tests are often used as instruments of agenda-setting and control in developing areas to enable policy-makers to establish and embed education policy agendas throughout the education system and society. As an alternative method, Critical Language Testing assumes that tests are value-laden instruments and products of political, social, cultural, and ideologically driven educational agendas. This article critically examines three Iranian high-stakes tests (the National University Entrance Exam, the MA/MS Exam, and PhD examinations) to evaluate whether covert policies and agendas are being deployed in the Iranian context. It applies qualitative methods and Strauss and Corbin’s [1998. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. London: Sage] constant comparative method to demonstrate the existence of clear patterns of domination. Democratic testing is therefore suggested as a way forward by which policy-makers can operationalize a just and fair exam whereby testing parties’ ideas, and intuitions are equally taken into account and their rights are protected.

KEYWORDS:

• High-stakes tests
• agenda-setting
• democratic assessment
• Critical Language Testing
• Iranian educational system

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Parvin Safari

Parvin Safari is a PhD candidate of TEFL at Shiraz University, Islamic Republic of Iran. She got her MA as a Top Student from Yazd University. She is an external reviewer and editorial member of Asian EFL Journal, and Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal. So far, she has presented and extensively published several papers in (inter)national conferences and reputable journals. Her areas of interest include critical pedagogy, critical language testing, ecological language learning, semiotics and the philosophy of language, teacher education, educational reform, and discourse analysis.

Nasser Rashidi

Nasser Rashidi is Professor of TEFL at Department of Foreign Languages & Linguistics at Shiraz University, Islamic Republic of Iran. He has presented and published many papers in different (inter)national conferences and reputable journals. His areas of interest include the philosophy of language learning, critical pedagogy, critical discourse analysis, and teacher education.