Ecological/Sociocultural Approaches to Educative Curriculum Design and Assessment

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session presents linked findings from a portfolio of iterative curriculum development and assessment projects focused on better challenging and supporting secondary-level students who are bureaucratically designated as English Learners. By adopting an ecological approach to the development of learners that spans multiple microsystems, the curriculum offers students structured opportunities to explore central disciplinary ideas while developing greater autonomy. This session focuses on the empirical growth trajectories of students who participated in field trials of the curriculum in English Language Arts and mathematics. Alongside these questions about student development, papers also consider the architecture developed for the expansion of teacher expertise as well as implications for formative assessment practices to inform pedagogical decision making.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Second Language Research

Chair

• Helyn Kim, Institute of Education Sciences

Papers

• Analyzing Changes in Participation Over Time: From Pandemic Silence to Scaffolded Critical, Sustained Interaction - Aida Walqui, WestEd

• Simultaneous Development of Language and Mathematical Ideas Among Students Bureaucratically Designated as English Learners - Andrew Haiwen Chu, WestEd; Leslie Hamburger, WestEd

• Who Decides What English Learners Can Do? Challenging Reductivist Notions of English Learners' Potential - Lee Hartman, WestEd; Shirley Feldman, WestEd

• Deepening Teacher Expertise Over Time Through the Use of Educative Materials - Mary K. Schmida, WestEd

• Designing Formative Assessment Into Ambitious Instructional Units for Secondary-Level English Learners - Margaret Heritage, Heritage Consulting; E. Caroline Wylie, Center for Assessment

Discussant

• George C. Bunch, University of California - Santa Cruz