Commentary: The Promise of Learning Progressions for the Integration of Science and Language Assessment

• In Event: 77.029 - Formative Assessment and Learning Progression Approaches to Assessing Science and Language Learning of English Learners

Abstract

In this paper, we consider implications for the formative assessment of science learning and English learning made by learning progressions. Learning progressions trace the development of students’ thinking in relation to core ideas and principles in a domain from rudimentary to sophisticated levels. They support teachers’ ability to engage in “interpretive listening,” that is to gain insight into student understanding. The value of progressions for formative assessment is that they offer teachers a “cognitive lens” through which they can view evidence of student learning, make hypotheses about students’ current status with respect to specific points of development (e.g., the transitions or changes in thinking and skills), as well as their profile of partial understandings, and, based on this information, take pedagogical action to advance learning (Heritage, 2008). Additionally, progressions provide what Ball and others have described as “horizon knowledge” – a sense of where learning is going beyond what might be relevant to a particular grade level (Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008).

While learning progressions have been used to guide formative assessment of mathematics and science learning in the past, learning progressions have rarely been seen in the area of language development or used as a means to combine these domains. This paper provides an extended commentary on the implementation of learning progressions in the sciences. We examine how learning is being researched and developed, and, in particular, how the papers in this session have begun conceptualizing and applying learning progressions that can take account of both the science and the language-learning contexts encountered by English learners. The paper is intended to inform teachers, administrators, curriculum developers, and educational researchers about the commonalities and differences in the three papers presented in the session in their approaches to achieving this integration of science and language. For example, paper 1 offers a vision of learning progressions acting as the “linchpin” to align both formative and summative assessment to science and literacy curricula and instruction. The paper also articulates the range of possible similarities and differences in science learning progressions for English learners and their English-speaking peers. Paper 3 describes learning progressions for informal discourse as well as for more sophisticated, scientific discourse in students’ development of scientific explanations, arguments and predictions. The commentary includes an illustrative extension to science of the methods used in a study applying tandem learning progressions in mathematics and language development. The commentary concludes with suggestions for the future study of the efficacy of science formative assessment with English learners. These include the need for critical meta-analyses of the literature on formative assessment and language/literacy in science, and the need for more empirical studies of formative assessment of science with English learners.

Authors

• Alison L. Bailey, University of California - Los Angeles

• Margaret Heritage, WestEd