ABSTRACT
Evidence-centered design (ECD) is a conceptual framework for the design and delivery of educational assessments, organized around the idea of assessment as evidentiary argument. We want to draw inferences about what learners know or can do in various situations, based on observing what they say, do, or make in a handful of particular situations (Mislevy et al., 2003). Assessment is viewed as five coordinated layers of activities, processes, and elements. Most directly related to test development are the layers called Domain Modeling, in which assessment design and use arguments are developed, and the Conceptual Assessment Framework, in which Student, Evidence, and Task Models specify the pieces that instantiate the argument (such as scoring methods, measurement models, and schemas for tasks). This chapter lays out the basic ideas of ECD and discusses ways it can be gainfully employed in language testing.
