Resisting and Reconstructing the Cultural Norms in Assessments: A Case Study of a Dual-Language Preschool

• In Event: Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Iterative Alternatives to Assessment and Accountability

Abstract

The objective of this 24-month ethnographic study of a dual language (Italian-English) preschool (ages 3 years to Kindergarten) is to uncover how local communities resist and reconstruct culturally, linguistically and developmentally inappropriate assessments tools used to measure young children’s bilingual development. This study examines: (1) How a dual language school’s stakeholders resisted current formal assessments. (2) How an administrator-teacher-researcher collaborative team reconstructed of the schools’ cultural, linguistic and developmental norms and values by merging Italian cultural and linguistic educational norms with US-based cultural and linguistic norms; and finally, (3) How the collaborative team co-constructed a global assessment tool and an assessment system to measure individual children’s multilingual development which reflects the locally produced Italian-United States values and norms.

Author

• Sara C. Michael-Luna, Queens College - CUNY