The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics

WWashback in Language Assessment

ANTHONY GREEN

“Washback” refers to the influence of an assessment on teaching and learning and for most (although not all) writers on the subject relates to what occurs prior to and in preparation for that assessment. Washback is often conceived as one form of assessment consequence or “impact,” this being a more general term that refers to any of the effects an assessment may have “on individuals, policies or practices, within the classroom, the school, the educational system, or society as a whole” (Wall, 1997, p. 291), including effects on teaching and learning that may follow from the use of assessment results, or the provision of feedback.

Use of the term “washback” (and, interchangeably, “backwash”) to refer to the unintended and damaging consequences of assessment dates at least to the 1950s (see, e.g., Bielby, 1953). However, the concept is much older. It has been suggested for well over a hundred years that tests can be unsettling and demotivating for learners and tend to restrict what is taught and learned to what is tested. This point was succinctly expressed by Huxley (1897) in a lecture delivered in 1874. Students, he argued, “become deteriorated by the constant effort to pass this or that examination . . . They work to pass and not to know; and outraged science takes her revenge. They do pass and they don't know” (pp. 228–9). The possibility of “positive washback” (Wilkinson, 1965)—using assessments to encourage certain desirable ...