What is the TOEFL Primary score that shows the student is ready to take the one upper-level assessment among the TOEFL Family of assessments? In other words, when is it the right time to recommend as a teacher to my students that they can take TOEFL Primary Step 2 or TOEFL Junior Standard? The educators who joined TOEFL Institutional Test User Workshop recently in ETS Princeton Campus now have the answer. However, what was more striking to all of that it took 4 years for the research team to conduct their studies to be able to answer this question!
It is important to make decisions based on research in education. Research provides evidence-based insights into the effectiveness of different teaching methods, interventions, and programs. By using research to inform decision-making, educational practitioners can ensure that their actions are grounded in the best available evidence.
This can lead to more effective and efficient teaching, improved student outcomes, and a better understanding of the complex issues facing educators today. Leaving ETS campus, we were all confident that decisions we make based on the data from the TOEFL Family of Assessments are based on rigorous and ongoing research.
This gathering enabled us to bridge the gap between research and practice. While researchers provided practitioners with the latest findings and evidence-based practices, practitioners and decision makers provide researchers with feedback on what works in real-world settings. It also helped practitioners become more critical consumers of research, enabling them to better evaluate the quality and relevance of research studies. We hope that this collaboration will lead to more effective English language teaching methods, desired student outcomes, and a better understanding of the use of assessments.
We would like to thank one more time to all the researchers at ETS and practitioners and decision makers from different schools to make this fruitful exchange with a joint effort and transparency to a greater success in English language education.
Good news shared:
As the participants of this year, we were lucky to get the news before anyone else: TOEFL Primary and TOEFL Junior Writing are the next two assessments to join the family!
During one of the sessions, we were informed about the steps and the status of the test development process for TOEFL Junior Writing and Primary Writing, TOEFL Primary and TOEFL Junior Writing Item Types and how AI is used in automated scoring for the TOEFL Young Students Series Writing Tests.
It was a fruitful session with lots of eye-opening content from the research team and enthusiastic and attentive questions and comments from the participants.
Our contribution:
In the world of education, making informed decisions is crucial for success. Whether you’re a teacher, administrator, or parent, having accurate data about student performance can help you make better decisions that lead to better outcomes.
It is confirmed that assessments are one of the most valuable sources of data in education. They provide a snapshot of a student’s knowledge, skills, and abilities at a particular moment in time. But it’s not just about grades or test scores. Assessments can also reveal valuable insights into a student’s learning style, strengths, and points for improvement.
For this year’s training, as Goal Testing, we decided to deliver a workshop by designing a session to contribute to the event from a different perspective. Goal Testing educational advisors and teacher trainers meet hundreds of teachers, administrators, parents and students all over Europe and Turkey to guide assessment users to serve as best practices for their unique context. Since this has given us so much experience and expertise in the use of assessment data, we were glad to be given the opportunity to share those with both the practitioners and the researchers.
In our session FROM NUMBERS TO ACTION- The Power of Assessment Data in Making Educational Decisions, we co-presented with Jasper Kok from the Netherlands, managing director of the Board of OPO Hof van Twente, and Gijs Rutering, headteacher of OBS Azelo, OPO Hof van Twente.
While we questioned and brainstormed with all the participants about what assessment is and how can we use it free from all the stereotypes, Jasper Kok gave a detailed description of how they implement Quality Control Management of data in all 9 schools of the board he manages.
Following the Dutch perspective on data management, Gijs Rutering presented as a best practice on how they make use of data to create personalized educational paths for all the students in his school.
In the third part of our workshop, we provided the decision makers and heads of departments with some tools that they can use together with their teams in their schools to work on the assessment data and to create action plans for their institutions.
Lastly, we informed our participants about the status of our Erasmus project, how TOEFL YSS is used in the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark, and how we have shaped the assessment-related teacher training sessions for two years within the project. As a great supporter and the sponsor of our project, it was of great importance for us to share our experience in that, as well.
It was a great pleasure and a precious experience for us to deliver our workshop to this unique audience. We hope to continue to work with each and every of them for many years to come, learn more together, exchange ideas and put them into action.
