Examination Information

講者：Prof. Antony Kunnan（全民英檢顧問）

日期/時間：101年10月22日(週一)下午14:30–16:00 （14:00開始進場）

地點：國立臺灣大學應用力學館四樓會議室 （請由台北市復興南路與辛亥路之台大校門進入）會場地圖

報名方式：網路報名

聯絡電話：02-2377-8071 分機 279、282，鄭小姐

演講內容簡介（本演講將以英文進行）：

Fairness, and its partner justice, of an assessment and assessment practice are considered desirable qualities. The main difficulty has been with different interpretations of the term fairness (for example, “unbiased,” “equal opportunity,” “equitable treatment,” “similar outcomes in terms of scores,”), different views about the scope of fairness (does fairness include validity or does validity include fairness?), and different levels of criticality of fairness (should we pay attention to it? Or should nothing be done about it?). Similarly, the term justice is not easy to understand; not surprisingly, even in 1759, Adam Smith lamented in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that there are different meanings of justice. But despite these difficulties in understanding and implementation, only public institutions that advocate blatant discrimination would not accept the general concept of fairness and justice in assessment. This is because the very concept of the examination (or assessment) itself, introduced as part of the Civil Service selection process in China centuries ago and in France, Germany, and the U.K. (and in its colony India) in the late 18^th and 19^thcenturies, implemented the concept of fairness and justice. For, one of the main goals of examinations is to bring about a leveling of the playing field by assessing abilities and awarding merit based on abilities and not offering benefits based on privilege and patronage. This goal of examinations continues to this day.

However, a principled foundational basis for fairness and justice has not been presented. This talk attempts to provide such a basis for fairness and justice as applied to language assessment. It includes hypothetical or imagined vignettes that exclude concrete details so that we can focus on a limited number of issues and reflections from popular philosophical doctrines, namely, the three ways of thinking about fairness and justice: the utilitarian, the libertarian, and the contractarian, or Rawls/Sen. Specifically, philosophers from each of these traditions may take a view that supports or criticizes specific actions of a test developer. The main question in each of these scenarios is: What is the right thing to do? The talk concludes with how principles of fairness and justice in language assessment can be advanced.

講者介紹：

現職：

Professor, TESOL Program/Applied and Advanced Studies in Education
California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA)
Professor, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University , Singapore

重要經歷：

2003-present  Professor, TESOL Program, CSULA
2009-2013      Honorary Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong
2007-2011      Dean and Professor, Dept. of English, American University of Armenia, Yerevan
2008-2009      Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong
2006-2007      Fulbright Scholar & Visiting Professor, Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan
2004-2006      Chair, Division of Applied & Advanced Studies in Education, CSULA

學歷：

PhD. Applied Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles, 1991.

研究領域：

◘  test validation
◘  bias and fairness
◘  accommodations
◘  the politics of assessment
◘  language assessment for admissions and placement as well as for employment, 
    citizenship, immigration
◘  asylum language assessment

原文連結