Chapter 8

Good Reasons for Bad Testing Performance: The Interactional Substrate of Educational Testing*

Douglas W. Maynard

Indiana University

Courtney L. Marlaire

Marquette University

Children who experience difficulties in school or at home may be referred to a diagnostic clinic and there take a battery of examinations, including some that test their educational level and learning abilities. In analyzing the administration of a variety of test instruments, we argued that the results of these examinations are collaborative productions (Marlaire & Maynard, 1990).1This is contrary to the stimulus–response model of the testing relationship, which presumes that examiners are neutral conduits of prespecified items to which examinees respond with correct ...

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