Call for Papers

The Center for Languages & Intercultural Communication at Rice University invites you to submit a proposal to the:

4th Annual CLIC Conference
Beyond Validity: Social and Ethical Consequences of Assessment
April 12 – 14, 2019
Houston, TX

The 4th Annual CLIC Conference focuses on the analysis of the social and ethical consequences of assessment practices in second language education, ranging from macro-level perspectives, such as language ideology, to micro-level perspectives, such as classroom interaction.

Second language tests are often designed with the expressed purpose of eliminating the influence of contextual factors to generalize findings about test takers beyond the specificity of the testing situation. By limiting the effect of contextual factors, however, we may create mismatches between test outcomes and actual language use and between test purposes and test uses. More specifically, many scholars (Fulcher, 2004; Hill & McNamara, 2011; Kunnan, 2004; McNamara & Ryan, 2011; Shohamy, 2001) have proposed to purposefully include the role of context in tests to examine the social and ethical consequences of assessment.

Proposals are invited to address work on language assessment in the following broad thematic divisions:

a) Theoretical frameworks for assessing social and ethical consequences of assessment;
b) Advantages and limitations of incorporating various layers of social context into the theoretical construct of L2 ability;
c) Social and ethical issues when tests use decontextualized language data, with limited regard to the actual language use by the target language communities;
d) Practical adaptations required to make general assessment frameworks (e.g., ACTFL, CEFR, TOEFL, Cambridge exams) viable for the evaluation of language ability at the local level
e) Political connotations of the specific tests based on contextualized views of L2 competence;

Deadline:

Your submission should be sent to CLIC-conferences@rice.edu as an email attachment by December 1, 2018

Abstracts:

Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words, double spaced. They should be clearly written and concisely address the following:

Context of the issues(s) researched or discussed
Purpose of the study, theoretical discussion, or development project
Summary of the approach, methodology, or analytical procedures used
Results, outcomes, or conclusions
Implications and/or significance to the field of language testing

Types of Presentations:

Papers: (30 minutes)

This format is best for completed theory-oriented research. Speakers will have 20 minutes to present their papers, followed by 10 minutes for questions and comments from the audience.

Posters: (1 hour)

Poster session will provide an opportunity for researchers to interact with interested participants during the hour-long session.

Proposal Evaluation Criteria:

Clarity of the abstract
Quality of the research study
Contribution to the field