Reframing test accommodation practice on English high-stake examination in Indonesia

Imam Khasbani

doi:10.30659/e.4.2.142-155

Abstract

The need to provide equal education access through an inclusive system to students with difficulties (henceforth SwD) has witnessed a substantially growing interest in the last recent years. As a standard practice of education and accountability system is inseparable, the need to include SwD in large-scale assessments has also become a central interest of many pedagogical practitioners around the world. This situation has later initiated the invention of test accommodation. With their challenges and difficulties, SwD are not expected to take part in the regular procedure of assessments. This paper, with regard to the above assertions, seeks to examine the accommodation practice in Indonesian educational system. It will primarily focus on analysing the types of accommodation applied in the country’s English high-stake assessment and the evaluation of the effectiveness of the ongoing practice. Contrary to common belief, accommodation in a language test is not exclusively aimed to accommodate students with mobility and cognitive challenges. Test accommodation is also aimed at helping students who face difficulty in the language of classroom instructions. However, due to the limited space reason and the fact that the phenomenon of learning difficulties caused by the inability of students to understand the language of instruction is uncommonly reported in Indonesian educational settings, this paper will primarily focus on the accommodation issue for students with physical and mental difficulty. Apart from highlighting on the history of test accommodation as well as the related issues, this paper will cover the nature of Indonesia’s practice towards test accommodation and discuss its real implementation. Further recommendations on how the test accommodation should be conducted in Indonesia educational settings will be discussed.

Highlights

Defining the Complexion and Issues of Test Accommodations The need to provide equal access for SwD and fight discrimination conducts in education have been a centre of attention for educational initiatives around the world
With all above explanations, a demonstrative conclusion that one could propose regarding the application of accommodation in Indonesia is that the practice is still far from being perfect and done without having an adequate level of validation and definite regulation
Taking into consideration the misconduct, social and academic implications issue of the high-stakes examination, a possible suggestion this paper could offer for better conduct of accommodation is providing well-formulated regulation that can be implemented by employing differential boots hypothesis, maximum potential thesis, and accommodative response format

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Defining the Complexion and Issues of Test Accommodations The need to provide equal access for SwD and fight discrimination conducts in education have been a centre of attention for educational initiatives around the world. One of commonly raised questions, as stated by Phillips (1994) and Sireci et al (2005), is around the extent to which modified assessments can give a bona fide score interpretation that test providers and educational institutions could utilize to tell the actual ability of a group of accommodated students. Those irresolute about the validity level of test accommodations are often of the opinion that alterations on a standard test can be highly possible to fallaciously inflate and deflate the achievement scores. Various resources such as books and journal articles were utilised to gather all relevant information and build on discussion on test accomodation for students with difficulties and the current practices of accomodation in Indonesia’s national examination

RESULT

Findings

CONCLUSION