While looking at the body of knowledge around the topic of standardized testing in teacher education, it was interesting to note that there was endless research done on how standardized tests in schools effected teaching methods and a lot of papers looked at standardized testing in testing the knowledge of students. Interestingly what was missing was what education theorists had to say about what goes into identifying good teaching and some clarity on standardized tests in teacher education. As the paper focuses on looking at the NET exam as an example to understand how higher education in India is affected by how their teaching aspirants and lecturers are tested. This paper aims to pinpoint the emerging problems with the NET exam and look at possible solutions that can tackle this problem with regard to recruiting English lecturers for university education.
The Effects of High Stakes Testing on Teachers in New Jersey by Sylvia Bulgar of Rider University, is an article that throws light on an important debate in the teaching community, whether to use new teaching methods or stick to traditional teaching methods that would help students get good scores when they undertook standardized tests. The article suggests through a study conducted on
students to see if the method of teaching mattered on how students performed in standardized tests revealed, all of the students in that sample scored percentiles ranging between 80s to high 90s even though they didnt devote time to procedural learning in the form of algorithms and no time was spent specifically preparing for the test. The concluding statement of this study was that teachers and school administrators will be successful in teaching students mathematics using inquiry and discovery over didactic methods and the students will perform well irrespective using their sense of inquiry and experience. The study also brought to light professional teachers who teach to the test in spite of knowing that it goes against their beliefs, while younger teachers were willing to try new techniques without inhibitions. Apart from the above points of discussion, the article calls for standardized tests to be updated and restructured to cater to the needs of students and the education community (Bulgar, 202). This article is important as it encourages teachers to adopt less traditional methods of teaching, also it is helpful in showing up the Indian standardized test that sticks to rote learning and traditional ways of preparing for the NET exam.