Validity Frameworks in Language Assessment

Validity in language testing examines the degree to which evidence and theories supports the interpretations and uses of test scores. Commonly used validity frameworks are either adopted from educational measurement or developed for high-stakes language testing contexts. In this interactive workshop, we present some of the most well-known validity frameworks and examine their strengths and weaknesses, and their applicability for classroom-based assessment.

Associate Professor Ute Knoch is the Director of the Language Testing Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests are in the areas of policy in language testing, and assessing languages for academic and professional purposes. She is the co-author of ‘Scoring Second Language Spoken and Written Performance’ (2021, Equinox, with Judith Fairbairn and Jin Yan), ‘Fairness, Justice and Language Assessment’ (2019, OUP, with Tim McNamara and Jason Fan), and ‘Assessing English for Professional Purposes’ (2020, with Susy Macqueen). She is currently the vice president of the Association for Language Testing and Assessment of Australia and New Zealand.

Dr Jason Fan is Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow at the Language Testing Research Centre (LTRC), University of Melbourne. He is the co-author (with Tim McNamara and Ute Knoch) of Fairness, Justice and Language Assessment (Oxford University Press, 2019), and the co-author (with Li Wang) of Working Towards a Proficiency Scale of Business English Writing: A Mixed-Methods Approach (Springer, 2021). He is the 2nd Vice President of Asian Association for Language Assessment (AALA), and the co-editor (with John Read) of Studies in Language Assessment (formerly Papers in Language Testing and Assessment).