Translations of Linguistic Diversity: Assessment and Placement Networks and the Enaction of ESL

• In Event: 66.052 - Language Policy, Accountability, and English Language Learner Students

Abstract

Community colleges are experiencing an increase in both the number of students who require remediation and linguistically diverse immigrant-origin students, and enact policies that use standardized assessments to place students into remedial and ESL courses. Using actor-network theory (ANT), this article examines the ways in which test scores are translated into these categories, and reveals how patterns of categorization stabilize differently at certain locations (campuses). Actors confront the issue of ambiguous student proficiencies and identities, thus generating new categories that both fail to account for complexity and to truly address the needs of students, as these networks prioritize the stabilization of human categories. The study calls for focusing on the way categories are generated when examining policy effectiveness.

Authors

• Tasha Lyn Darbes, City College of New York - CUNY

• Carola Suarez-Orozco, University of California – Los Angeles