Designing an English language and literacies knowledge and skills test for ITE students in South Africa
Abstract
Abstract
Since 2016 the PrimTEd project has assessed first and fourth year student teachers’ English language and literacies knowledge and skills with a view to optimising what is offered in teacher education courses. In 2021, after a critical review of these Englsih language assessments, a process of test redesigning, which also provides professional development opportunities for language teacher educators, was initiated.
This paper reports on this process of modifying an existing test and, of a new design which is still work in progress. It is argued that the emerging test has the potential to contribute to improved English language teacher education at universities and to improved languages and literacies teaching and learning in South African primary schools.
Keywords: Assessment, PrimTEd English language project, test item development, Core Academic Language Skills Initial Teacher Education (ITE) professional development of language teacher educators
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors retain copyright of their work, with first non-exclusive publication rights granted to Journal of Education. Authors agree that any subsequent publication of the article will credit the Journal as the site of first publication and provide a link to the Journal website. Authors contributing to Journal of Education agree to publish their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, allowing third parties users to copy, distribute and transmit an article as long as the author is attributed, the article is not used for commercial purposes, and the work is not modified or adapted in any way, and that in the event of reuse or distribution, the terms of this license are made clear. Note: Authors who may need to comply with the particular open access requirements of their funding bodies can apply to JoE for a more liberal licence, such as Creative Commons CC BY.
