An International Framework and a Local Standardised Test: A Former Item Writer’s Autoethnography

A recent trend dominating education worldwide is the enactment of external accountability frameworks and standards-based assessment. Likewise, in language education, international standards like the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) have been increasingly used for local standardised test development and alignment. However, there has been little research into the application of the CEFR in item writing, the activity of creating new items and associated materials, in local standardised testing contexts. To bridge this gap, this autoethnography shares my firsthand experience of writing items for a locally-developed, CEFR-aligned standardised English test in Vietnam. By combining evocative and analytic autoethnography, I aim to achieve two goals. My first goal is to offer insight from the perspective of an item writer into a prevalent but not unproblematic practice of borrowing international standards to develop local high-stakes tests. My second goal is to demonstrate, through vignettes, the advantages of autoethnography over other methodological approaches in investigating research contexts in which access to suitable participants is particularly challenging.