Investigating the Washback Effect of a Secondary English Public Examination in Bangladesh

• In Event: 63.017 - The Canadian Committee of Graduate Students in Education Research Symposium

Abstract

This study investigated the alignment of English Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examination in Bangladesh with the national English curriculum and its associated textbook, and classroom instruction, focusing on if and how that alignment relationship produces washback effects on teaching and learning. SSC examination is the biggest and most important school leaving exam in the context of the country, both historically and socially (Author, 2018a). Being a high stakes test, SSC examination is supposed to create a major washback effect in classroom teaching, however, so far, no largescale washback study has been conducted on this exam. Moreover, washback has rarely been researched from an alignment perspective (Author, 2018b). This study, therefore, should contribute significantly in understanding washback in a unique context with a different angel.
The argument- and evidence-based framework proposed by Pellegrino, DiBello, and Goldman (2016) served as the conceptual framework to guide this qualitative multimethod research. Unlike earlier washback models (Bailey, 1996; Cheng, 2002, Green, 2007; Shih, 2007), which do not offer guidance to explore the alignment of tests with curriculum and instruction, Pellegrino et al.’s validity framework creates opportunities to explore test washback from an alignment viewpoint by incorporating evidence from various sources in the educational system. Of the three components of the framework, cognitive, instructional and inferential validity, I chose to employ Instructional validity, because it seeks evidence about the alignment of the tests with the knowledge and skills as defined in the curriculum and the usefulness of the testing for teachers and students to guide their classroom teaching and learning. According to the adapted framework, data were collected from three sources: a) document analysis was used to gauge the alignment among the curriculum document, textbook and question papers; b) interviews with the 10 teachers and six focus group discussions were conducted to understand how these participants perceived the alignment; c) classrooms were observed to appraise whether the alignment relationship created washback effects in classroom teaching and learning.
The major findings were: 1) classroom instruction was built on exam objectives because of the disparities between curriculum goals and examination. The exam did not assess speaking and listening skills; the reading and writing tasks used in the exam were designed in a faulty way which endorsed memorization overruling the communicative language teaching motive of the curriculum. Thus, teachers found it more practical to teach the test to ensure the high score in the exam. 2) Students’ learning was influenced by negative test-washback. Their exam preparation did not contribute to their English proficiency and consequently they relied exclusively on drilling and memorization to score high in the exam. This washback study opens avenues to look at the test washback from a curriculum alignment perspective, that misalignment at the educational system may generate unintended effects of testing on teaching and learning.

Author

• Nasreen Sultana, Queen's University - Kingston