(347) DEVELOPMENT-ORIENTED TESTING MODEL: CASE STUDY OF THE WEST AFRICAN EXAMINATIONS COUNCIL AND CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL CERTIFICATE EXAMINATIONS

摘要

What is not inspected should not be expected. This proven statement succinctly captures the essenceand significance of examinations. All over the world, Students and Teachers literally dance to thebeats of examinations, especially examinations linked with certification. It is therefore not uncommonto find Teachers and Students concentrating more on topics and activities being assessed andneglecting topics and practical works that are consistently not being assessed by examining bodies.Consequently, examination/certification bodies wield great powers that could be harnessed to catalyzepositive development. It is against this background that the Development Oriented Testing [DOT]model was conceived. The questions, however, are: do the examination bodies realize the enormity ofthe power they have? If they do, to what extent are they pragmatically using this power to catalyzeproductivity and development in their domain of control? This paper hypothesized that in manyAfrican/developing nations, unlike in developed countries, the external examination/certification bodiesbarely assess true practical work and applied knowledge. The paper further postulates that this trendcould be the bane of low productivity/development in these countries. The case study and ex postfacto research designs were adopted in this study. To test these hypotheses, comparative analysis ofpast West African Examination Council [WAEC]-West African Secondary School CertificateExamination [WASSCE] and Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Examination[IGCSE] was conducted. The goal of the content analysis of past questions was to identify questionsthat tend to mobilize secondary school Teachers/Students to apply knowledge gained in the course ofstudy to evolve useful products and services. The outcome of the content analysis revealed that thereare remarkable differences in the number of higher educational objectives examined in Cambridgeand WAEC O-level examinations. Cambridge examinations furnished more application questions thanWAEC examinations. A quick survey of Teachers and Students on this issue further corroborated thepostulations. The submission of this research, based on the inference made from this finding, is thatthis negative trend must be reversed [particularly at the secondary and tertiary levels] for African andrelated developing nations to experience pragmatic indigenous productivity/development. It istherefore recommended that the Development Oriented Testing [DOT] Model should be adopted toredress this situation.