Re-Envisioning the Role of Assessment Within an Ecology of Learning

• In Event: Reconceptualizing and Improving the Education of Adolescent English Learners: An Ecological Approach

Abstract

Objectives
Assessment plays a significant role in the multi-tiered ecology in which the education of English Learners is situated, and ranges from macro-level assessment used to classify students as English Learners to micro-level classroom assessment used to guide instruction. However, the consequences of current assessments for English Learners, especially those labeled as “long-term” are not always desirable, including lack of access to core curriculum and demanding learning opportunities (Johnson, 2019), and frequent exclusion from grade-level content courses altogether (Umansky, 2016). Assessment must play its part in providing information that will support educators to engage in ongoing practices that are likely to lead to positive outcomes for every English Learner. To this end, this paper presents a vision for the development and implementation of a learning-centered comprehensive assessment system (CAS): a “comprehensive set of means for eliciting evidence of student performance” (National Research Council, 2001 p. 20) in support of assessment use to enhance the learning and promote the agency of all secondary-grade English Learners across content areas.

Framework
The assessments in the CAS are firmly grounded in a perspective on learning for secondary-grade English Learners in which disciplinary concepts and analytical practices are not distinct from the linguistic means through which understanding is developed and expressed.

The validation approach for the assessments in the CAS draws on Kane’s (2006, 2013) structure for an argument-based approach to validity in order to delineate the evidence that needs to be accumulated and evaluated for valid interpretations and uses of the information yielded by the assessments.

Methods/Modes of Inquiry
This study was guided by inquiry questions related to assessment use for secondary-grade English Learners, which informed iterative cycles of development. For each assessment in the CAS, propositions, claims, and sources of evidence and methods for the validity evaluation were laid out. Five peer reviewers, all experts in assessment, reviewed drafts of the proposed CAS, which led to significant ongoing revisions and refinements of assessment assumptions, propositions, claims, and sources of validity evidence.

Data
Data for this study included a literature review on assessment development and validation in general, assessment development and use to enhance the learning of secondary-grade English Learners in particular, draft proposals for the CAS resulting from the review, and iterative guidance from peer reviewers.

Results/Arguments
The CAS lays out a roadmap for changing assessments in the learning ecology so that the macro- meso- and micro-levels of assessment are grounded in the same principles of learning, emanate from the same set of goals related to language and content learning, communicate a shared vision of what is important for students to know and be able to do with content and language, and push teaching and learning in a common direction.

Significance
Central goals for the CAS are for English Learners in secondary grades to have rigorous and engaging learning opportunities, and for their teachers to participate with skill and confidence in the practice of designing, interpreting, and validating assessments that provide meaningful information about English Learners’ knowledge, skills, and powerful use of language.

Authors

• Margaret Heritage, Heritage Consulting

• E. Caroline Wylie, Educational Testing Service

• Molly Marian Faulkner-Bond, WestEd