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Assessment, equity and language of learning : key issues for higher education selection in South Africa
Bibliography: p. 314-336.
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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School of Education
2014
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| _version_ | 1867613300654604288 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Yeld, Nan |
| author2 | Muller, Johan |
| author_browse | Muller, Johan Yeld, Nan |
| author_facet | Muller, Johan Yeld, Nan |
| author_sort | Yeld, Nan |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | Bibliography: p. 314-336. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/8771 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:33:57.504Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publishDateRange | 2014 |
| publishDateSort | 2014 |
| publisher | School of Education |
| publisherStr | School of Education |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/8771 Assessment, equity and language of learning : key issues for higher education selection in South Africa Yeld, Nan Muller, Johan Dunne, Tim Education Bibliography: p. 314-336. The central problem investigated by this study arises from the fact that South African Senior Certificate results are not, for the majority of educationally disadvantaged candidates, reliable predictors of academic success in Higher Education. Despite this limitation, however, the Senior Certificate examination plays a vital role in the education system. The aims of the study are thus to investigate procedures that could be used in addition to, rather than instead of, the Senior Certificate, and that would provide useful information about the future academic performance of educationally disadvantaged candidates. The purpose of these procedures is to widen effective access opportunities for such students. It is clear that such procedures need to provide different information from that provided by the Senior Certificate which, like all achievement tests, aims to test learners' understandings in terms of the knowledge and skills covered in a preceding course of instruction. In contexts where great educational disparities exist, as is the case in the South African education system, it is neither fair nor defensible to base key gate-keeping events (such as entry to Higher Education) entirely on performance on such an examination. Apart from issues of fairness, however, for students whose prior opportunities to learn have been grossly inadequate, achievement (curriculum-aligned) tests yield little useful information about candidates' underlying capacities and abilities. The study therefore investigates alternatives to achievement tests, and concludes that non curriculum-aligned testing of core skills and abilities could provide a workable alternative. However, moving from curriculum-aligned to non curriculum-aligned tests can not in itself address the assessment challenge posed in identifying talented students in highly heterogeneous populations, in terms of educational preparation. In such contexts, educationally disadvantaged students will inevitably perform poorly in competition with their more advantaged peers, regardless of the basis of the tests. The study therefore reviews various approaches to what has become known as dynamic assessment, and concludes that non curriculum-aligned, core skills tests developed as far as possible on dynamic lines may represent the most effective and fair approach to assessment in this context. After reviewing major theories of knowing and learning, the roles of language in teaching and learning processes, and the history and possibilities of language testing, a set of specifications (a construct) is developed and proposed as the basis for an academic literacy test designed on dynamic lines. The study then sets out to examine the Placement Tests in English for Educational Purposes (PTEEP), developed by the Alternative Admissions Research Project at the University of Cape Town. These tests aim to provide access opportunities for students whose Senior Certificate results do not necessarily reveal their potential to succeed at UCT. The investigation focuses on the extent to which the tests can be said to be (i) valid in terms of the construct established earlier, and (ii) useful in terms of providing useful, additional information about educationally disadvantaged candidates for selection purposes. In other words, the first part of the study is devoted to developing, on the basis of an extensive literature review, a set of requirements for an academic literacy test for selection to Higher Education in South Africa. The second part of the study assesses the extent to which a series of tests developed by the author and currently being used for selection in this context, can be considered to be valid in terms of the construct established in part one. Given the importance of English Second Language Higher Grade (ESL-HG) as the largest single subject registration in the Senior Certificate, and of English as language of learning, the study includes an investigation of the validity of the ESL-HG examinations, and of the usefulness of ESL-HG results for selection purposes. . The investigation employs both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. in summary, the analysis leads to the following major conclusions: + overall, the PTEEP tests can be considered to be valid in terms of construct and content validity; + the use of scaffolding within a test, for talented educationally disadvantaged candidates, can significantly enhance test performance; + on the basis of survival analysis techniques (Polakow 1999), the PTEEP tests are effective in predicting academic success at UCT. That is, students who score in the top quintile of their candidate pool are significantly less likely to be excluded than are comparable students who are admitted on the basis of their Senior Certificate resits alone. Students who score in the bottom quintile, however, have a very significantly higher risk of exclusion than their peers admitted on the basis of their Senior Certificate results alone; + the PTEEP tests and the ESL-HG examinations exhibit divergent validity (that is, they are not positively associated, but reveal either random or inverse correlations); and + ESL-HG and performance at UCT are not significantly associated. On the basis of these conclusions, the study recommends that Higher Education institutions include, as part of their selection criteria and in addition to Senior Certificate results, a test that is non curriculum-aligned; based on the domain of academic literacy as defined in the study; and developed on the basis of dynamic principles. The study also recommends that the potential contribution of such a test to strengthen quality assurance at the school-leaving/Higher Education interface be investigated by the national Department of Education. Finally, it is recommended that as a matter of urgency, the examining of ESL-HG be investigated, with particular reference to the extent to which the examination targets (and therefore contributes to promoting the development of) cognitive academic language proficiency. 2014-10-25T18:58:11Z 2014-10-25T18:58:11Z 2001 Doctoral Thesis Doctoral PhD http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8771 eng application/pdf School of Education Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | Education Yeld, Nan Assessment, equity and language of learning : key issues for higher education selection in South Africa |
| thesis_degree_str | Doctoral |
| title | Assessment, equity and language of learning : key issues for higher education selection in South Africa |
| title_full | Assessment, equity and language of learning : key issues for higher education selection in South Africa |
| title_fullStr | Assessment, equity and language of learning : key issues for higher education selection in South Africa |
| title_full_unstemmed | Assessment, equity and language of learning : key issues for higher education selection in South Africa |
| title_short | Assessment, equity and language of learning : key issues for higher education selection in South Africa |
| title_sort | assessment equity and language of learning key issues for higher education selection in south africa |
| topic | Education |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8771 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT yeldnan assessmentequityandlanguageoflearningkeyissuesforhighereducationselectioninsouthafrica |