Dr. Jean Turner, Professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and language assessment specialist, presents at the 2011 Language Teaching Research Colloquium in Ann Arbor, MI.

1. Workforce language assessment in the 21st century knowledge economy: A quality management perspective LTRC 2011 Discussant: Jean Turner

2. From the June 2, 2011 report by the Task Force, the charge from John Read is: “proposing some realistic actions that ILTA can take” “with a strong focus on promoting assessment literacy … ways of informing non-testing people who are seeking advice … what represents a good quality language test or assessment procedure.” ILTA Task Force on Quality Assurance for Language Testing, Evaluation, and Assessment

3. Quality management is an over-arching concept that involves: Working with systems Working with people Continual improvement coming from within an organization through a particular way of doing work Quality assurance Quality management

4. From some of the previous presentations— Testing boards (Jason Fan) People involved in making admissions decisions (April Gunther) Various types of score users (Meg Malone) Novice & experienced language teachers (OfraInbar-Lourie) Who are these people who might be seeking to enhance their assessment literacy?

5. 81 % of the 243 respondents, representing companies that operate in countries A - Z who report, have an English requirement for employees About 13% use commercially-available language tests About 33% use an in-house assessment procedure From the research done by Damerow, Pahl, & Bailey…

6. Mary Ann’s research reflects the five issues she presents in her abstract very clearly. In Jean-speak they are: Understanding the complex nature of second language learning Understanding of the process of developing context-specific tests/assessments Domain specific nature of users’ needs Interpreting the results of tests for making decisions about employees Understanding the findings of workplace research From the research done by Christison

7. A framework that is familiar and respected Focuses efforts to continually improve systems Supports leadership from within organizations Links practices to theory (without an explicit focus on the theory!) A mechanism for uniting an organization’s processes with professional testing/assessment practices improving practices in the workplace Auditable practices in assessment/testing (if not “error free”) What does the quality management perspective offer us as an organization with a Task?

8. language assessment practices? ILTA? language assessment professionals? professionals in other fields who have testing responsibilities ? Where might that perspective take….