Language assessment literacy has been discussed by language assessment specialists since Davies' seminal 2008 article. Much of this discussion has focused on experts' opinions of what teachers know, do not know, and should know about assessment. This paper reports on a project which aimed to put teachers at the centre of the debate by exploring…

The goal of the experiment was to examine the relevance of a new French web-based assessment, Tinfolec (Test INFOrmatisé d'évaluation de la LECture), the aim of which is to evaluate the reading abilities of children in primary grades. The participants were 1,016 children from Grades 2 to 5. They completed the five tasks of Tinfolec designed to…

The present research tests the hypothesis that parental values and educational practices are intermediary variables between the socio-economic status (SES) of families and early learning in children. Our empirical study was based on 299 parents with children in their final year at eight French kindergartens. We constructed an explanatory…

The 7th International Conference on Education Data Mining held on July 4th-7th, 2014, at the Institute of Education, London, UK is the leading international forum for high-quality research that mines large data sets in order to answer educational research questions that shed light on the learning process. These data sets may come from the traces…

Argues that Americans can learn from the wide variety of types of assessment included in French national evaluations, from the way these exams are used formatively on a large scale to plan instruction and professional development (rather than to pass or fail children or to reward or punish teachers), and from the hazards of a single high stakes…

Examines the uniformity of the nationally defined syllabuses and examinations in the French educational system. Describes the dynamism of the system within the secondary sector. Discusses the various schools types within the system. Addresses problems with the testing system such as overcomprehensiveness, waste of resources, and heavy preparatory…

Most other nations have a very different approach to measuring academic achievement at the end of high school and signaling that information to universities and other interested parties. In Australia, Denmark, England, Scotland, Finland, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, and many Canadian and German provinces, for example, high school exit…

Examining testing practices in other countries can help formulate ideas and issues in establishing a national assessment system in the United States. Based on recent reports by the Office of Technology and Assessment and the National Endowment for the Humanities, this digest provides an overview of the national examinations in several European…

The French employers federation (MEDEF) has taken the initiative to develop a joint inter-sectoral mechanism for accreditation of occupational competences. The approach analyzes occupations at a more abstract level than the tasks performed within a specific job to facilitate comparison of different occupations from different sectors and allow…