Quality Assurance
The ALTE Code of Practice and Quality Management Systems
Since the eight founder members of ALTE first met in 1990, there
has been a shared concern for high standards in language assessment
and for fair treatment of the candidates who take their exams.
These concerns have provided a focus for working together in the
past decade and a key objective of the Association is:
" ...to establish professional standards for all
stages of the language-testing process,"
In publishing its first Code of Practice in 1994, ALTE
set out the standards that Members of the association aimed to
meet in producing their language exams. It drew on The Code
of Fair Testing Practices in Education produced by the Washington
D.C. Joint Committee on Testing Practices (1988) and was intended
to be a broad statement of what the users of the ALTE examinations
should expect and the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders
in striving for fairness.
In the late 1990s a number of other projects were a high priority
for ALTE. But in 1999/2000, ALTE turned its attention back to
the question, re-establishing a Code of Practice Working group
to take this project forward.
In 2001 the Working Group met three times in January, May and
October and reported on progress at the full ALTE meetings in
Perugia (May 2001) and Budapest (November 2001). They met again
in Arnhem in March 2001 and outcomes were discussed by the full
Membership at the St Petersburg meeting, April 2002.
The new dimension which has been introduced into the work at
this stage is the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM)
and Quality Management Systems - QMS.
QM systems have been widely adopted in both manufacturing and
service industries with the aim of improving quality in order
to "meet customer requirements". More recently the same
approach has been adopted in many educational contexts across
Europe, including within national education systems and by international,
non-governmental organisations. "Customer focus" is
a common theme in both the business and educational contexts and
this is the same for ALTE as examination providers. The main "customers"
of the ALTE Members are the candidates who take the examinations
(primary users) and who require high quality assessment systems
in order to be treated fairly. By adopting the QM approach, it
is hoped that the goal of "continuous improvement" will
help to ensure that standards continue to rise and the requirements
of the "customers" for the exams can always be met.
The adoption of a QM approach has led to the reworking of the
Code of Practice in order to reflect the practical aspects
of assessment work within the ALTE membership. The aim is to establish
workable procedures and progammes of improvement which ultimately
will be able to guarantee minimum quality standards based on the
principles in the Code of Practice.
The approach to Quality Management which is being implemented
is based on the following key concepts taken from the literature
on QM:
- the organisation
- self-assessment and peer monitoring
In this approach, it is important to identify the roles and responsibilities
of key stakeholders in the ALTE institutions and to apply
the system with flexibility according to the specific features of each organisation (i.e. the different ALTE Members and their
stakeholder groups). In the current phase of the project, the
Working Group has been focusing on the different organisational
factors within the ALTE Membership and on the range of diversity
that exists. In seeking to establish standards it is not the aim
to make all ALTE Members conform to the same models of assessment
for all 23 languages represented, and it is important to recognise
the varied linguistic, educational and cultural contexts within
which the examinations are being developed and used. An appropriate
balance is required between the need to guarantee professional
standards to users, and the need to take into account the differing
organisational features of the ALTE institutions and the contexts
in which their exams are used.
The Working Group recommended that all Members should attempt
to identify their current strengths and the areas in need of immediate
improvement within their own organisation. On this basis, it will
then be possible to establish the desired outcomes for both short-
and long-term developments. The aim should be:
- to set minimum acceptable standards
- to establish "best practice" models
- to aim at continuous improvement (move towards best practice)
The aim for all Members should be to continue to share expertise
and gradually to raise standards over time, i.e. to aim at the best practice models through an on-going process of development.
In a QM system of this kind, standards are not imposed from "outside"
but are established through the mechanism of the system itself
and the procedures to monitor standards are based on awareness
raising and self-assessment in the first instance. External (peer)
monitoring is introduced at a later stage to confirm that the
minimum standards are being met. In its current form the Code
of Practice has been reworked to function as an awareness raising
tool at this stage of the project. The re-designed format now
reflects the four aspects of the test development cycle with which all ALTE Members are familiar:
- Examination development
- Administration of the examinations
- Processing of the examinations (including the marking, grading
and issue of results)
- Analysis and post-examination review
In 2002 the Working Group carried out further analysis and reported
back to the membership at their meeting in Salamanca in November
2002. This work is continuing in 2003 : a workshop was held at
the Slovenia meeting in April and further subgroup meetings are
planned for throughout the year.
References
ALTE (1998) Handbook of Language Examinations and Examination
Systems
Washington D.C. Joint Committee on Testing Practices (1988) The
Code of Fair Testing Practices in Education
A longer version of this article appears in Sprøgforum.
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