Recent official policy and concepts of reading comprehension and inference: the case of England's primary curriculum     

Jazz C. Williams 《Literacy》2014,48(2):95-102

This article engages with recent policy on reading comprehension. It argues that the construct of inference has been treated as a single entity despite research and literature to the contrary, and this is perpetuated in the National Curriculum for 2014. It explores the limitations of conceptualising inference as a unitary construct and demonstrates that official policy has confused progression in inference with the process of a reader building a mental representation of a text. It argues that criterion‐referenced statements for progression in inference are flawed. The article proposes a means of conceptualising inference so it can be operationalised for the purpose of teaching and learning in the classroom. This is exemplified and applied to an example of a standardised test.  相似文献   

The New Salford Sentence Reading Test (2012) and the Diagnostic Reading Analysis (2008) assess ‘inference’ – but what forms of inference do they test?          下载免费PDF全文

Jazz C Williams 《English in Education》2015,49(1):25-40

Several inference types serving distinct purposes are established in the literature on reading comprehension. Despite this highlighting that inference is a non‐unitary construct, reading tests tend to treat it as a single ability. Consequently, different tests can assess different inferential abilities. Professionals, knowing what is implicitly assessed in an assessment tool, can make informed decisions on test selection and take a critical approach to interpreting test outcomes. This article examines the inferential abilities assessed by the New Salford Sentence Reading Test and the Diagnostic Reading Analysis. Both are aimed at practitioners working with children of primary and secondary school age. Each takes inference to be a unitary construct. Qualitative analysis of the inferential questions in the tests revealed that they assess different forms of inference. The New Salford Sentence Reading Test predominantly assesses inferences requiring background knowledge. In contrast, the Diagnostic Reading Analysis requires inferences relying on textual evidence to a greater extent. The article concludes that it is reasonable to assert that the Diagnostic Reading Analysis is preferable to the New Salford Sentence Reading Test on the basis of test fairness and the consistency in sampling inferences types.  相似文献   

“Assessing Without Levels”: preliminary research on assessment literacy in one primary school     

Jazz C. Williams 《Educational studies》2015,41(3):341-346

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