Abstract
The present chapter reviews aspects of ethics and professionalism in language testing and assessment and considers notions of rights and the use of codes as a way of linking both aspects. Against the traditional professions of law and medicine, language testing’s claims to professionalism are not strong. But what it can do is to publish its commitment to ethics by means of a Code of Ethics. This provides for accountability both to members of the profession and to its stakeholders. This drive to accountability, to make its principles and practices explicit, explains the emphasis given in the language testing literature to the role of standards, both as goals and as the criteria for evaluating language testing procedures. It also explains the concern in the profession to uphold individual rights, especially those of test-takers. The review accepts that both professionalism and Codes of Ethics can be used improperly for face-saving ends and raises the question of how far issues to do with ethics, professionalism, rights and codes can be subsumed under the overall concepts of reliability and validity.
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Notes
- 1.
Special Issues of Language Testing (14/3: 1997) and of Language Assessment Quarterly (1/2&3: 2004) are dedicated to the issue of ethics in language testing.
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Davies, A. (2017). Ethics, Professionalism, Rights, and Codes. In: Shohamy, E., Or, I., May, S. (eds) Language Testing and Assessment. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02261-1_27
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