Tests, Tiers and Achievement: gender and performance at 16 and 14 in England

Abstract

Much of the research into examinations and assessment has tended to ignore their social role and impact. Research in testing and examinations, in particular, has predominantly been concerned with the development and refinement of different approaches to educational measurement and technical critiques of the assessment models and associated procedures used to assess students (Broadfoot, 1996). Such a focus has tended to divert research related to examinations and testing away from the effects of the assessment procedures used in the performance of students and the social impact on learning and teaching that assessment techniques generate. However, as part of the shift in the models of learning and achievement that underpin assessment and examination systems (Murphy, 1998), informed by a wider debate about how best to assess students to fully understand their learning, educational assessors now recognise that assessment practices are not technical devices which are socially neutral; they are social techniques that have social consequences (Connell, Johnston & White, 1992). Assessors' choices of assessment techniques are not value free nor value neutral. The choices of what to assess, how to assess it and how it is evaluated all involve subjective judgements about what is valued knowledge and how this is assessed. This then involves choices about the language used, the contexts deemed appropriate, the selection of