Thoughts on language assessment ethics

The ‘Language Assessment Ethics Conference’ back in my M.A.TESOL days has always been in my mind, which provided the opportunity to ponder upon ethical theory in professional fields including education. As Dr. Kunnan mentioned in the introduction session of that conference, the world has been suffering from lack of ethical principles in a variety of fields. His remarks prompted me to think of all the innocent victims from 9-11 attack in 2001 and the constant retaliation, human cloning as well as organ donation as one of the most recent issues concerned with ethics and morality.

As an English educator, I agree to the fact that the development of ethical principles in education (especially in the language assessment area) has retarded compared to the speed of the proliferation. I’ve always thought that it is one thing to have a grasp of the principles of second/ foreign language learning and teaching, and another to creatively formulate specific hypotheses about language learning in particular contexts and to garner empirical support for these hypotheses. That support can be gathered by means of careful measurement of the language competence of learners in given situations. That is, our theory of second language acquisition can be put into practice everyday in the classroom, but we will never know how valid our theory is unless our learners’ success is systematically measured in ethical way. Although a drastical change or innovation in the language assessment may not be demanded or expected, a thorough examination on ethics can be the next step the educators need to take for the present.

In the present world where morality and ethical thoughts are gradually losing their grounds by whited sepulchers, it is important for all the practioners in each profession to find out the relationship between philosophical ethics and professional responsibility. The major goal of education lies in the pursuit of helping individuals reach what they need to be the owner of their lives. Dr. Sharon Bishop claimed that acquiring a certain set of skills demanded by general standardized tests bear little meaning on the part of test developers as well as test users. The ethical rules are urged to consider the meaningful connection with unfamiliar context that people will face in their profession instead of simply providing the general principles or code of conduct.

With the above thoughts in mind, some questions came to me, which could halp us relate the principles to language testing practice and our profession. The questions were whether or not our actions/ decisions in the field of education reflect utilitarianism or Kantian ethics of morality. I personally came to think about my own students in the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classes that I used to teach back in Korea. Sometimes they might not have known what is being tested when they tackle a test. They might have felt, for a variety of reasons, that a test isn’t testing what it is “supposed” to test. In other words, the tests might not have been carefully constructed or in the well-thought out formats.

As shown in Kantian ethics, one exclusive ruling government is not desirable because it will compromise individual person’s freedom and dignity. In this respect, I agree to the following idea proposed by Dr. Antony Kunnan (my professor at the MATESOL program at my alma mater, Cal State Univ, LA). He asserted that more concerted efforts should be made, in the field of language assessment, to come up with a transnational language testing that will be able to connect global ethics to local ground of ethics. In other words, it is our aspiration and responsibility to build a well-balanced language assessment ethics that allows us to understand who the testees are, what their experiences are, and how the scores are interpreted for individuals.