Call for Papers – Special Issue of TESL Canada Journal, Fall 2015: Language Assessment in Canada: Critical Issues and Research Agenda
DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JUNE 1, 2015
Guest Editor: Liying Cheng, PhD, Professor of Language Assessment and Evaluation
Assessment plays a central role in schooling, postsecondary education, workplace, and professional certification. Assessment results are utilized extensively in these contexts as powerful decision-making tools. Inferences drawn by decision-makers about test-takers’ language abilities based on the scores from such assessments result in high-stakes decisions such as student promotion, university admission, program placement, graduation, professional
certification, and citizenship and immigration. Often, decisions regarding access to educational and work opportunities depend on these assessment results. It is essential to better understand the inferences made based on these results if accurate decisions are to be made. Erring in decisions of selection and access on the basis of inaccurate or improper inferences drawn from test scores will be costly, ultimately undermining knowledge transfer potential and threatening social, educational, and economic development.
In this volume we aim to bring together papers that address critical issues and research agenda in the use of language assessment in various educational, workplace, professional, and immigration contexts, with relevance for the Canadian context. This themed issue invites papers to address language assessment issues and research agenda in different contexts but not limited to:
• Relationships between language teaching, learning, and assessment
• Assessment of learning and assessment for learning
• Classroom-based language assessment (including portfolio-based assessment, and peer- and selfassessment)
• Washback, impact, and consequences of large-scale language testing
• Government-mandated assessment provisions (e.g., for immigration and certification purposes)
• Impact of cultural differences on the appropriateness of assessment options
• Language assessment literacy
We encourage a broad range of methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks, including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods papers. Whatever the approach taken, it is essential that papers include implications for assessment in educational, workplace, professional, and/or citizenship/immigration contexts in Canada.
Manuscripts are to be transmitted as an email attachment directed to the TESL Canada Journal (teslcan@ualberta.ca).
To review author guidelines, please visit the Journal website:
http://www.teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/about/submissions#authorGuidelines.
As part of the submission process, authors are required to complete the TESL Canada Journal Submission Form and send it to teslcan@ualberta.ca as an attachment, along with their manuscript. Questions regarding this special issue can also be directed to teslcan@ualberta.ca.