Associate Professor
carolyn [dot] turner [at] mcgill [dot] ca (E-mail)
Phone: 514-398-6984
Room 421, Education Building
Areas of interest
- Second and foreign language assessment
- Classroom-based assessment that links assessment/teaching/learning
- Impact of high-stakes tests on teaching and learning
- Empirically based rating scales for performance testing
- Research methods, included mixed methods research designs
- Health care access for linguistic minorities/Language needs and assessment in health professions
Description of research/teaching activities
My research focuses on issues in second language assessment. I am interested in the contributing factors to L2 performance and my work spans a variety of contexts from classroom settings to health care environments. Depending on the research questions, my research designs have included the full spectrum of methodologies from quantitative to qualitative to mixed methods research. Traditionally my field of Language Testing has examined individual language ability from a cognitive perspective (micro), but with joint performances in paired/group tasks and the global/societal factors to consider, we need to now also consider the social interactional perspective (macro). My work has evolved in this direction.
Selected publications/presentations
Colby-Kelly, C., & Turner, C.E. (2007). AFL research in the L2 classroom and evidence of usefulness: Taking formative assessment to the next level. Canadian Modern Language Review, 64(1), 9-38.
Fox, J., Wesche, M., Bayliss, D., Cheng, L., Turner, C.E., & Doe, C. (Eds.). (2007). Language testing reconsidered. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.
Turner, C.E, Laurier, M., & Wei, X. (2007, June). Health care access for linguistic minorities: Identifying nurse speech acts for assessment. 29th Language Testing Research Colloquium (LTRC ’07). Barcelona, Spain.
Turner, C.E. (2006). Professionalism and high-stakes tests: Teachers’ perspectives when dealing with educational change introduced through provincial exams. TESL Canada Journal, 23(2), 54-76.
Turner, C.E., & Upshur, J.A. (2002). Rating scales derived from student samples: Effects of the scale maker and the student sample on scale content and student scores. TESOL Quarterly, 36(1), 49-70.