Abstracts - Earli

limit the parents’ and the pupil’s possibilities to make themselves listened to. The teachers’subordinated projects appear to be, to show a confidential relationship to the pupil, to be able toinform, to comfort and to teach, but also projects that contradict the competent-teacher-project, asto reduce the bad news or to avoid the difficult issues. Our study points towards the necessity thatat least all professional parties concerned are made conscious of the conditions of the talk fordevelopment on a structural as well as on an individual level, bearing in mind the assessmentculture that the talk is part of.The impact of a new assessment system in New Zealand: Views of teachers and studentsSatomi Mizutani, University of Auckland, New ZealandThis paper describes research investigating both the nature of test impact on teaching and learning,resulting from a newly-introduced national assessment for senior students at New Zealandsecondary schools, and the extent to which some intended positive impact could be identified.Unlike the previous norm-referenced national assessment which involved social comparison, thenew national assessment is standards-based where students’ performance is evaluated against predescribedcriteria (Donnelly, 2000). Dweck (1992) stated that standards-based assessment couldencourage mastery-goal orientation where students are concerned with mastering new skills anddeveloping understanding rather than performance-goal orientation where students are concernedwith doing better than others or proving intelligence. One of the Ministry of Education’s aims wasto motivate students of all abilities to strive for higher levels of achievement by providing clearstandards as goals and emphasising self-comparison (Fancy, 2001). Perceptions of the newassessment were elicited through focus groups involving 7 teachers and 32 students of Japanese atsecondary schools. A qualitative analysis of participants’ responses revealed instances of bothpositive and negative test impact. While some positive intended impact was identified, the impactseen as negative by some students included ‘a lack of competition’. This was, in fact, an intendedimpact as the new standards-based assessment was expected to encourage self-comparison ratherthan social comparison. Findings confirm claims made by some researchers (e.g. Alderson 2001,Barrows 2003) that test impact is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon mediated by teacher andstudent beliefs. Given the superiority of mastery-goal orientation for long-term effects (e.g. Ames,1992), this study argues that there is a need for effort to shift from the old examination culturewhere students focused on surpassing their peers to the new one where they try to better their ownprevious achievement. Implications are drawn for standards-based assessment and for future testimpact research.The relation between learning style dimensions, appropriateness of workload and feedback, andevolutions in students’ assessment preferencesGert Vanthournout, University of Antwerp, BelgiumChrista Van Ginneken, University of Antwerp, BelgiumDavid Gijbels, University of Antwerp, BelgiumThe present study wants to further investigate influencing factors in the evolution of students’assessment preferences. It takes into account dimensions of students’ learning styles and hands-onexperience with a learning- and assessment environment with appropriate workload and feedbackpossibilities when looking into the evolution of students’ assessment preferences. Two researchquestions were formulated. First, how do students’ assessment preferences change when they havehands-on experience with alternative learning and assessment procedures with appropriate levelsof workload and feedback? Second, if students’ assessment preferences change with hands-onexperiences, do differences in the dimensions of students’ learning styles influence the magnitude– 731 –