Doctoral Degrees (English)
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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (English) by Subject "Academic literacy"
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Item Open Access Konstitutiewe voorwaardes vir die ontwerp van 'n toets van akademiese geletterdheid(University of the Free State, 2010-11) Van Dyk, Tobias Johannes; Weideman, A. J.English: Throughput rates at South African universities are low and contribute, among others, to financial losses for a number of stakeholders: students, their parents/guardians, donors of scholarships, universities and the state. This compels institutions to investigate those factors influencing study success. Various international and local investigations indicate that academic language ability is one of several factors that has a significant influence on academic success. In order to make informed decisions about low stakes issues such as language support, universities need mechanisms to enable them to do so. One such mechanism is the use of measuring instruments, such as the Toets van Akademiese Geletterdheidsvlakke (TAG), to make a diagnosis of students‘ academic language ability, and to then place them on appropriate language support programmes. Tests, however, have the obvious power to touch the lives of people in some way. It is therefore necessary that an accountable and transparent approach is followed when designing and implementing tests such as TAG, and when interpreting test results. This is usually done by investigating the reliability and validity of a test; the latter by means of a process of validation. This study is an example of such an investigation where TAG is subjected to thorough and systematic scrutiny. A framework that considers applied linguistics as a discipline of design was followed, against which the construct (underlying theoretical framework), test specifications (the blueprint) and task types, as well as the reliability and validity of TAG were investigated. The framework suggests that a test is a technical design that can be used as solution to a (language) problem. This technical design is grounded upon certain constitutive conditions underlying it, and disclosed by regulative conditions. The former include aspects such as reliability and validity, and the latter utility, transparency, accountability and care. Although the focus of this study was on the constitutive conditions for designing and developing TAG, it repeatedly refers to the importance of the interplay between constitutive and regulative conditions, as well as the fact that a test such as TAG cannot be investigated from one perspective only. The argument of this study is thus that a technically accountable approach to the development and implementation of, and investigations into tests such as TAG is necessary in order to use them in a justifiable and responsible manner. The conclusion of this study is that TAG is a test of high quality and that it can without a doubt be used by universities for purposes of placement, because it was designed and implemented with care and its results are constantly being scrutinised.Item Open Access Transparency, accessibility and accountability as regulative conditions for a postgraduate test of academic literacy(University of the Free State, 2012-01) Rambiritch, Avasha; Weideman, A. J.; Brokensha, S. I.English: This study is concerned with transparency, accessibility and accountability as regulative conditions for a postgraduate test of academic literacy. What it will propose to do is investigate how these can be incorporated into the design of one test, the Test of Academic Literacy for Postgraduate Students (TALPS), and theoretically accounted for in terms of a framework. A main focus is to show that the questions raised here about the social dimension of language testing cannot be adequately answered by experts in the field like Messick (1989b; 1996), Bachman and Palmer (1996), and Kunnan (2000; 2004). Instead these questions can be answered in a “third idea, other than validity and usefulness” (Weideman 2009a: 239), as outlined by Weideman, an idea that does not foreground one concept but rather identifies a number of fundamental considerations for language testing. The argument here is that construct and other empirically based forms of validity are not enough to validate a language test and that what is needed, in addition, is a detailed look at issues of transparency, accessibility and accountability. This study begins by contextualising the problem of poor academic literacy and outlining the need for academic literacy tests such as the Test of Academic Literacy Levels (TALL) and TALPS. This is followed by an in-depth study of previous work in the field of language testing. The literature on key concepts such as validity, reliability, accessibility, transparency and accountability is surveyed as well. An important part of this study is telling the story of TALPS from its initial conceptualisation to its final implementation. Included in this is a detailed study of the reliability and validity of the test, taking the form of a validation argument. Subsequent chapters (5, 6 and 7) focus specifically on issues of transparency, accessibility and accountability as they relate to TALPS. This study would not be complete without the voices of the test takers. A detailed summary of the data collected from a questionnaire administered to students who wrote TALPS is offered as well. The questionnaire has been designed to elicit information, comments, questions and reactions from the testees about the test. The final chapter in this study will attempt to provide a summary of the answers to the important questions that have been asked and answered in the course of this investigation. It will also consider the link between transparency, accessibility and accountability, and will focus briefly on other conditions in the framework that contribute to the design of fair and socially acceptable tests. This study hopes to make a contribution to the field of language testing by concentrating on an area of testing that has been largely ignored – the social dimension. One of the aims of this study is to show the complementarity among the empirical, social and ethical dimensions of TALPS. It therefore provides a framework that incorporates a concern for the empirical analyses of a test as well as a concern for the social dimensions of language testing. Test developers are challenged to consider important questions related to every aspect of the test, leading to the design of fair, accessible tests that are designed by test developers who are willing to be accountable for their designs.