Effects of Rater Training on the Assessment of L2 English Oral Proficiency

The main objective of this study was to examine whether a Rater Identity Development (RID) program would increase interrater reliability and improve calibration of scores against benchmarks in the assessment of second/foreign language English oral proficiency. Eleven primary school teachers-as-raters participated. A pretest–intervention/RID–posttest design was employed and data included 220 assessments of student performances. Two types of rater-reliability analyses were conducted: first, estimates of the intraclass correlation coefficient two-way random effects model, in order to indicate the extent to which raters were consistent in their rankings, and second, a many-facet Rasch measurement analysis, extended through FACETS®, to explore variation regarding systematic differences of rater severity/leniency. Results showed improvement in terms of consistency, presumably as a result of training; simultaneously, the differences in severity became greater. Results suggest that future rater training may draw on central components of RID, such as core concepts in language assessment, individual feedback, and social moderation work.

Cross-Sector Moderation as a Means of Engaging Staff with Assessment and Teaching Pedagogy

This article investigates the benefits that cross-sector moderation events can bring to school staff and individual teachers. It focuses on a series of events held in one education authority over a period of four years. These events involved staff from every primary and secondary school within the authority and took the form of social moderation. The aim of moderation in the context of this article was to bring groups of teachers from each sector together and encourage them to discuss various pieces of pupil work and to award a curricular level to this work. It should be noted that the pupil work had already been awarded a curricular level by the class teacher, although this was not shared with the teacher moderators. From this research it can be seen that the benefits of cross-sector moderation include an increased trust from staff between and across the sectors in not only their own judgments, but the judgments of other staff in regard to assessing pupil work. Cross-sector moderation alone cannot raise achievement or attainment, but it can aid the development of a learning community amongst individual schools and clusters of schools that does appear from staff comments to have an impact on schools and teachers. The impact of this learning community extends to include discussions on teaching pedagogy employed, as well as resources used. This was not happening prior to this cross-sector approach to moderation and demonstrates how moderation can aid the development of a learning community.

Where is the love? The social aspects of mimicry

One striking characteristic of human social interactions is unconscious mimicry; people have a tendency to take over each other's posture, mannerisms and behaviours without awareness. Our goal is to make the case that unconscious mimicry plays an important role in human social interaction and to show that mimicry is closely related to and moderated by our connectedness to others. First we will position human unconscious mimicry in relation to types of imitation used in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Then we will provide support for social moderation of mimicry. Characteristics of both the mimicker and the mimickee influence the degree of mimicry in a social interaction. Next, we turn to the positive social consequences of this unconscious mimicry and we will present data showing how being imitated makes people more assimilative in general. In the final section, we discuss what these findings imply for theorizing on the mechanisms of imitation and point out several issues that need to be resolved before a start can be made to integrate this field in the broader context of research on imitation.