The Assessment of Classroom Language: Challenging the rhetoric of ‘objectivity’

Abstract

Assessment and reporting underpin and lend legitimacy to the notion of parental choice in an educational market place. Consequently, one of the current rhetorics of education in the UK concerns the possibility of achieving ‘objectivee teacher assessments. In this paper I examine the objectivity of teacher assessment with particular reference to the National Curriculum Attainment Target of ‘Speaking and Listening’. I do so through an examination of the impact of two different teaching styles on the classroom language of a cohort of children. The research took place in an infant school in a small town in the south of England with a predominantly white working-class intake. © 1993, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.