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Exams tested by Covid-19: An opportunity to rethink standardized senior secondary examinations

The global Covid-19 pandemic is testing the responsiveness of school systems. Extensive discourse about disruptions to the standardized examinations students take in their final year of secondary school is symbolic of their high-stakes status worldwide. The interruptions provide an opportune moment...

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Autor principal: Cairns, Rebecca
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7582022/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33110277
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11125-020-09515-9
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author Cairns, Rebecca
author_facet Cairns, Rebecca
author_sort Cairns, Rebecca
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description The global Covid-19 pandemic is testing the responsiveness of school systems. Extensive discourse about disruptions to the standardized examinations students take in their final year of secondary school is symbolic of their high-stakes status worldwide. The interruptions provide an opportune moment to question the efficacy of exams as a measurement of achievement. To explore these issues, this article shares some on-the-ground illustrations from Australian teachers about how high-stakes exams shape their enactment of senior secondary history curriculum. The presence of a discourse of exam alignment, which places a disproportionate emphasis on preparing students for exams, has implications for teachers’ curricular practices and wider equity issues. These issues resonate in other international settings, especially during the pandemic. The severity of the Covid-19 economic downturn means it is more important than ever to investigate the relationship between curricular practices and socio-economic structures, to ensure examinations do not compound educational disadvantage.
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spelling pubmed-75820222020-10-23 Exams tested by Covid-19: An opportunity to rethink standardized senior secondary examinations Cairns, Rebecca Prospects (Paris) Open File The global Covid-19 pandemic is testing the responsiveness of school systems. Extensive discourse about disruptions to the standardized examinations students take in their final year of secondary school is symbolic of their high-stakes status worldwide. The interruptions provide an opportune moment to question the efficacy of exams as a measurement of achievement. To explore these issues, this article shares some on-the-ground illustrations from Australian teachers about how high-stakes exams shape their enactment of senior secondary history curriculum. The presence of a discourse of exam alignment, which places a disproportionate emphasis on preparing students for exams, has implications for teachers’ curricular practices and wider equity issues. These issues resonate in other international settings, especially during the pandemic. The severity of the Covid-19 economic downturn means it is more important than ever to investigate the relationship between curricular practices and socio-economic structures, to ensure examinations do not compound educational disadvantage. Springer Netherlands 2020-10-23 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC7582022/ /pubmed/33110277 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11125-020-09515-9 Text en © UNESCO IBE 2020 This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Open File
Cairns, Rebecca
Exams tested by Covid-19: An opportunity to rethink standardized senior secondary examinations
title Exams tested by Covid-19: An opportunity to rethink standardized senior secondary examinations
title_full Exams tested by Covid-19: An opportunity to rethink standardized senior secondary examinations
title_fullStr Exams tested by Covid-19: An opportunity to rethink standardized senior secondary examinations
title_full_unstemmed Exams tested by Covid-19: An opportunity to rethink standardized senior secondary examinations
title_short Exams tested by Covid-19: An opportunity to rethink standardized senior secondary examinations
title_sort exams tested by covid-19: an opportunity to rethink standardized senior secondary examinations
topic Open File
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7582022/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33110277
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11125-020-09515-9
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