Testing times: children's experiences of standardised assessment

Abstract

This article describes a study in which Year 7 children were invited to reflect on their engagement in standardised compulsory numeracy testing in Queensland, Australia. Their accounts reveal the strategic orientations children adopt to manage multiple pressures created by such tests. Although they regarded standardised tests as an unavoidable facet of schooling, the children told of how this pervasive social practice produced discomfort, eroded confidence and positioned children hierarchically as mathematical identities. As they contemplated changes that might both enhance the quality of information gathered by the test and improve their experience of 'being tested', the children provided evidence of how the test defined for them both mathematics and mathematical competence.