Assessment and the washback effect

I will use this blog entry to discuss briefly one phenomenon in classroom evaluation practices that, even though is not explicitly mentioned in chapters 33, 34, 35, poses great challenges to language teachers in practically all educational settings: the washback effect.

The washback effect refers to the extent to which different forms of assessment (normally but not exclusively testing) affect processes of learning and teaching.  The simplest forms of the washback effect can be seen in students’ attitudes towards evaluation processes when they focus their efforts to ‘learn’ those things that they believe are going to be assessed by the teacher, or in the way teachers tailor their teaching to provide students with tools to do well in assessment procedures.

Probably one of the most easily recognizable and more detrimental forms of the washback effect can be seen in educational settings where standardized, universal testing is mandatory. Teachers, due to accountability and transparency issues (the need to demonstrate to educational authorities that students are actually learning according to institutionalized standards), adapt their teaching practices and curricula to respond to the challenges posed by these evaluations, even if they have nothing to do with the students’ realities. In these cases, actual learning blurs away and becomes learning to take tests, leaving aside the transformational nature of education. This way, we see how some teachers, in a desperate attempt to respond to these impositions, end up using their class time to ‘train’ students to succeed in these tests.

However, in cases where assessment is more contextually-centered and considers learners’ potential and necessities, there can be positive washback effects. If the goals of the learning units are sensible enough to respond to the learners’ needs, if students are aware of the nature of the learning goals and the relevance of these to their own life, having students practice the skills necessary to perform well in traditional and non-traditional forms of assessment can have positive effects in students’ learning.

In my opinion, two concepts are central to transform the negative effects of assessment into positive ones. The first one is the students’ awareness of the reasons why and how different forms of assessment are used in the classroom, and what and whose purposes it serves. The second is the nature of the tools of assessment. This is to say, whether these evaluation practices has been designed as a possibility for learning that is aligned with the learning outcomes of the class rather than as a gate-keeping process.