Curriculum and assessment mismatch

Periodical
Australian Journal of Language and Literacy
Volume
44
Year
2021
Issue number
3
Page range
22-34
Relates to study/studies
PIRLS 2016
PISA 2018

Curriculum and assessment mismatch

Examining the role of images in literacy assessments

Abstract

In light of the shift towards incorporating multimodality in the curriculum, it is of interest and value to examine the extent to which multimodal literacy is assessed in national and international literacy tests. This is so as to surface any misalignment between the two and highlight gaps which curriculum planners and assessment designers can address. Given the significant influence that the nature of assessment has in shaping classroom practices and teaching priorities, it is imperative that assessment is aligned with curriculum goals. Our paper examines the assessment items in the visual text comprehension in Singapore's national examinations, the Graduate Certificate of Education Ordinary Level (GCE O' Level) and the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), for the English Language exam, as well as the literacy components of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) reading items. We adopt the approach of an earlier study by Unsworth et al. (2019) and position our work as a replication study, extended to a new context. In adopting a common approach, we hope to offer an independent verification of the framework, analyses and findings from the earlier study and contribute towards consolidating and building up proven practices in the analysis of text-image relations within the field of multimodal studies. Our results similarly show an overall low proportion of test items that deal with images and image-language relations in the Singapore and international assessments. While the proportion of questions where the image is essential or supports answering the question is higher for the Singapore GCE O' Level exams, the role of images in the PSLE and international assessments is limited, which suggests a greater focus on assessing multimodal literacy is required. As curriculum reforms to incorporate multimodality in education become more commonplace around the world, we argue that attention on assessment must be the next frontier of change.