István JÁNK
Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra
(jankisti08@gmail.com)
Keywords: language discrimination, linguistic discrimination, educational evaluation, standard, linguistic codes.
Many factors distort teachers’ assessment and evaluation of students in the process of education. These distorting factors include the phenomenon where teachers stigmatize the varieties students bring from home. According to my hypothesis during educational assessment students’ performance is judged against this variety even in cases where factual knowledge is to be measured – it is the phenomenon of linguistic discrimination. Therefore, my research examines the extent to which students’ vernaculars influence the validity of the evaluation and teachers’ attitudes in situations when teachers intend to measure the students’ factual knowledge in oral production.
I have developed a new method of analysis for measuring linguistic discrimination in teachers’ assessment (because the traditional research methods are not suitable for this). Based on the results of pilot study I have used the method on a larger sample of teachers: nearly 500 Hungarian teachers and teacher trainees have joined the research from four – Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine – countries.
The results demonstrate that linguistic disadvantage and linguistic discrimination are strongly manifested in teachers’ evaluations. 40-50% of the teachers (depending on country) gave worse grade to students who did not use the standard variety and did not follow usual modes of language use in their speech even if they had perfect knowledge of the given material. Nevertheless, when a student had used the standard variety and had followed usual modes of language use in their speech, 50-60% of the teachers gave a better grade even if the student in question left crucial information out of their answer.