Public Defence: Marte Søve Syverud

Marte Søve Syverud is defending her thesis for the degree philosophiae doctor (PhD) at the University of South-Eastern Norway. The doctoral work has been carried out at the Faculty of Humanities, Sports and Educational Sciences.

You are welcome to join both her trial lecture and public defence.

• Join digitally (Zoom) 
• Read the dissertation: Teachers' practices of non-standardised oral exams and implications for validity (openarchive.usn.no)

Summary:

In this thesis I study teachers’ practices of oral exams in lower and upper secondary education. Findings from oral exams conducted by two teachers as examiners (the student’s own teacher as internal examiner and a teacher from another school as external examiner) show that oral exams are non-standardised and that there are variations in how the exams are carried out. There are variations in time use, in allocation of time between student presentation and subject conversation, number of questions that are posed to different students, and some students are assessed within a narrower part of the subject curriculum than others. The variations are found within as well as between pairs of examiners.

In line with previous research from Norway as well as international research, findings show that internal examiner take the role of student advocate, while external examiner take the role of judge in conversations where examiners must reach agreement on which grade to award a student. Together, findings include large degree of teacher control, holistic assessment, tacit knowledge and professional practice.

The thesis contributes with new knowledge about teachers’ practices of oral exams with consequences for how we understand and assess quality in oral exams. The thesis highlights the need for a discussion of how validity, which is a decisive quality criterion in assessment, may be understood when oral exams are teacher made.