ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses key issues in assessment involving assumptions about the role of language in linguistically and culturally diverse students’ learning, and how language mediates both the student experience of classroom assessment and educators’ abilities to draw valid inferences from assessments. The emphasis placed on classroom collaborative communication by current academic standards means educators and researchers need to be aware of appropriate language practices enabling learning through such interaction in their design of assessments of academic content learning. Large-scale testing cannot adequately measure the more contextualized and process-oriented aspects of language and content learning, and thus presents a problem for the valid assessment of academic achievement with English learners (EL students), who may rely on situated and integrated classroom settings to facilitate simultaneous language and content learning. Furthermore, unknown (i.e., unmeasured) student language competencies tied to students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds that are not viewed as conforming structurally or referentially to expected academic language usage may also be a threat to the validity of large-scale assessment that assumes homogeneity in student characteristics, including language usage and styles. Forms of contextualized assessment such as formative assessment, however, can help with the need to situate performance in social and learning interactions and build teacher awareness of how student stylistic preferences and competencies are functional in classroom interaction contexts. Specifically, formative assessment can allow for teachers using close-in observation of students’ interaction over time, and for teacher and peer assessors to offer students real-time cues and feedback supporting learning. Such support can reflect sensitivity to EL students’ levels of comprehension based on teachers’ enhanced understanding of classroom language practices of EL students, thereby making assessment of academic content in the classroom setting more suited to language-learning students. This chapter also addresses wider themes of the volume, including the role of students in their own and peers’ assessment.
