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>>Robert Linquanti: One of the key things then is that, um, when we're looking at students
who are English learners developing their English language skills that is going to significantly
affect their ability to perform on academic content assessments that are given in English,
as most are. um, and so we really need to understand what students' levels of English
Language Proficiency are when we test them, in order to have an idea about what kinds
of interference could be occurring for those students and to try and accommodate them in
those needs that they have. Um, so one big point then is that um we really have to think
about if our assessments don't take into into account our English learners levels of language
proficiency, then we're going to be unclear when um their results come back whether we're
looking at performances less than uh ah expected, what is interfering with that performance?
Is is their level of English language proficiency? uh, is it access to quality academic content
instruction or the opportunity to learn content? Is it their, their lack of knowledge in the
content area, or could it be some other construct-irrelevant as we call it interference. Interference from
the way that the assessment is uh is asking the student to to display knowledge or perform.
That may be confusing the student or they're not really understanding what's being asked.
There's two key points that that they should take away from the paper. One is that there's
going to need to be a lot more collaboration between those who are really focused on students'
language development and those who are focused on their academic content development and
in fact those kinds of disciplines and interests and pedagogical approaches are going to need
to become much more integrated. And so every teacher is going to really think about the
disciplinary language and ensure that students really have opportunities to engage in that.
With respect to our assessments, we really want folks to think about formative assessment
as being one of the key resources and by that I don't mean um ahem item banks and small
tests um but really to think about the instructional processes and practices and the tools that
can actually give teachers instructionally relevant information during the act of instruction.
This is really at the heart of formative assessment. So that those kinds of practices become intertwined
with what their pedagogical approaches are and can give them information to help improve
students' learning in the act of teaching.