Session Information
09 SES 14 A, Research And Practice On A-Level Examinations – A European Perspective On Student Assessment through High-Stakes Testing
Symposium
Contribution
Statewide exit exams are used by governments worldwide to guide instructional processes (e.g., Klein & van Ackeren, 2011). However, there is only little research on how different exam structures actually affect instructional practice, and on possible transintentional effects of the exams, for instance regarding preparation strategies and teaching-to-the-test in diverging exam systems. Therefore, the goal of the study at hand is to investigate how teachers in the context of different statewide exit exams prepare their students for the exams. This is accomplished in an exploratory international comparison (e.g., Phillips & Schweisfurth, 2007) of statewide exams at the end of upper secondary education in Finland, Ireland, and the Netherlands, comprising expert interviews with the exam authorities and a questionnaire survey with teachers (N = 385). Descriptive analyses of the questionnaire data suggest that although the teachers in the three countries differ in their attitudes towards exam preparation and the amount of time that should be spent on it, their preparation strategies are, with some exceptions, the same. Multiple regression analyses indicate that the factors the strategies are connected with differ across the countries, so it can be assumed that the different exam systems affect teachers’ preparation strategies in rather distinctive ways.
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