ABSTRACT
Elana Shohamy’s work has dramatically advanced our understanding of how language, testing, identity, power, and public policy interact to produce differences in educational access and academic achievement across groups within multilingual societies. Shohamy’s research has addressed a wide range of language assessment issues, including alternative assessment, oral testing, classroom and diagnostic assessment, and “washback,” with a focus on the social and political dimensions of language tests (e.g. Shohamy 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001; Shohamy & Hornberger, 2008). Shohamy’s most well-known contribution here concerns the power and misuses of tests, and in particular how tests impact teaching and learning practices, and thus serve as de facto language policies. This work has documented the negative consequences of tests in contexts of second language learning, migration, and, more recently, of language requirements for citizenship (e.g. Shohamy, 1998, 2001; Shohamy & Hornberger, 2008; Spolsky & Shohamy, 1999). Her book Language Policy: Hidden Agendas and New Approaches (Shohamy, 2006) introduced an expanded language policy framework that illustrated how everyday, often invisible mechanisms (e.g. tests, linguistic landscapes) create de facto language policies. These implicit policies, Shohamy has argued, lead to inequalities, violation of individual human rights, suppression of diversity, and marginalization of individuals and groups.
