Do high-stakes tests facilitate or hinder the use of ICT in the classroom ?

Abstract. High-stakes tests, whose results are the basis upon which significant decisions are made, are prevalent in most of the countries. A great number of studies have been conducted in different educational contexts to examine the washback effect of such tests on teaching and learning. However, language researchers still doubt whether high-stakes tests facilitate or hinder the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the classroom. This paper aims to explore the teachers’ perceptions of the washback effect of high-stakes tests on using ICT in the classroom. To this aim, a validated questionnaire was administered to 30 high school English teachers who were stratified randomly selected from the five main educational districts in the city of Isfahan, Iran. The respondents were requested to judge whether the high-stakes competitive Entrance Exam of the Universities (EEU) in Iran acts as a facilitator or barrier in using ICT in the classroom. The descriptive analysis of the results showed that the high-stakes EEU acts as a barrier preventing the teachers to integrate ICT into the curriculum. Moreover, the EEU explicitly directs the teachers to teach to the content and format of the test and ignore using ICT applications in teaching and learning.