FACULTY FOCUS
campusreview.com.au
Testing times
What’s wrong with the LANTITE
test, and do we even need it?
Melissa Barnes interviewed by Wade Zaglas
Dr Melissa Barnes is a lecturer
in the Faculty of Education at
Monash University, working
within the fields of teacher education,
assessment, policy and TESOL. She
is a critic of the controversial initial
teacher education test, also known as
the LANTITE.
In an interview with Campus Review,
Barnes highlighted the problem with
attaching the word “quality” to those who
pass the LANTITE test or “quality” teachers
in general.
As she explains, quality is a diverse and
difficult-to-explain phenomenon that varies
in different educational contexts. Barnes
does not believe “a literacy and numeracy
test is the best way to measure teacher
quality in the country”.
She also argues that using a third-party
organisation such as the Australian Council
for Education Research (ACER) is not the
best way to assess students’ literacy and
numeracy skills, and such a test would be
best left up to the universities to administer.
Finally, the Monash lecturer in education
holds concerns about the standardised
nature of the test, meaning students
are completing a multiple-choice test
essentially. Barnes recently conducted
a study with 134 fourth-year education
students and found that many of
them had concerns about the validity of
the test.
While Barnes believes strong numeracy
and literacy skills are critical to teaching,
she is unconvinced LANTITE has much to
offer in assessing the skills we want to see
in teachers.
CR: Do you think there was a need for more
quality among our graduates?
MB: I think it’s important to mention
that quality itself is a very difficult term
or concept to define. What actually
constitutes quality? And if we’re talking
about teacher quality, I think it’s even
more contentious because teaching
itself is so very context dependent.
What is considered as quality teaching
in one school might be very different in
another school depending on its mission,
and so on.
As a teacher educator at Monash,
I’m often amazed and very proud of
the teacher candidates that are leaving
Monash. From what I’ve seen, I wouldn’t
regard the quality of our teacher
candidates as an area that needs massive
improvement.
However, I can’t speak for all teacher
education programs. Also, I think that
we should always strive for the best in
education. I think teacher education
programs in Australia have the strong
capacity to prepare quality teachers. But
with this said, I just don’t think a literacy and
numeracy test is the best way to measure
or even ensure quality among our teacher
candidates.
What are your key issues or concerns with
the LANTITE, and can they be easily fixed?
I want to be very clear that I think
teachers should possess strong literacy
and numeracy skills. I actually don’t
think teacher candidates would disagree
with this.
My first my issue with the LANTITE is
that it is being used to try to measure
teacher quality. I don’t think an external
third-party test is the best way to do this.
I think using a standardised test to measure
teacher quality is very limited, and it can
only measure skills that can be tested in a
multiple choice format.
I conducted a study with about 135
fourth-year teacher education graduates,
and many of them raised concerns
about the validity of the test, and also
its relevance.
I’ve also had a lot of emails from other
teacher candidates from a range of
other universities that have raised similar
concerns. For example, the test isn’t
really testing one’s writing ability, but the
mechanics of writing. It relies heavily
on a particular set of vocabulary terms
that speaks in many ways to a very white
Australian system.
Interestingly, other countries have also
introduced basic skills tests. For example,
some states in the US and also in the UK,
but most have gotten rid of them. In the
case of New York State, for example, it was
overturned because issues were raised
that a standardised test was discriminatory.
Statistically minorities score lower on
standardised tests, so the courts decided
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