Challenging tradition : Teaching English in Sweden without the influence of National Testing

Abstract: When the Swedish school system met with the novel experience of cancelled the annual national tests in spring 2020, teachers across the country were forced to adapt to teaching without this traditional support. Due to English being one of the subjects required to administer national tests, upper secondary school English teachers were immediately affected. By looking at several studies regarding standardised testing in general, and Swedish national test tradition specifically, this qualitative study summarises how large-scale assessment in education affects teaching.Through semi-structured interviews with three English teachers, this study surveyed how teaching was affected by the cancellation of the national tests in Sweden. The teachers’ experiences of teaching without the supportive function of the national tests were also documented. The recorded interviews were analysed through the theoretical framework of reactivity, and specifically, Campbell’s Law. This study’s findings are that while the national tests hold a critical support function for teachers, they may also inhibit English teachers from teaching what is specified in the English curriculum. What emerged from the collected data and subsequent analysis was teachers’ fractured role as dependent on performance standards-based on test criteria rather than the content standards in the English curriculum. The interviewed teachers showed a great deal of trust in the national tests as grounds for assessing their students’ English skills, occasionally at the cost of their faith in themselves as teachers. Counterproductively, this resulted in teachers, consciously or not, adapting their teaching practices to fit the predicted national test rather than the curriculum. Essentially, teachers had changed their behaviour to accommodate an observer, as theorized by Campbell. During the 2020 spring semester when national tests were cancelled in Sweden, and English teachers all over the nation had to make do without their supporting function, this was made clear.