Introduction
Societal trends contribute to the emergence of the diversity of American students. This fact explains the need for an instrument allowing them to assess their knowledge based on various factors. The failure to do so would indicate the allegedly poor student performance, which would be biased due to the neglect of their origin and language skills. Therefore, it is necessary to establish evaluation methods suitable for all categories of students with the consideration of sociocultural factors to ensure a precise assessment of their abilities.
Summary of the Article
The article under consideration presents extensive information on the problem of assessing ELL students. It claims that the current situation requires an educational reform that would address their needs by including previously neglected factors. From the authors’ perspective, such a reform should be focused on the consideration of one’s culture, social interaction, the assistance of teachers, and the situative nature of performance (Smith, Teemant, & Pinnegar, 2004). In this way, they emphasize the need to match the assessment practices with individual factors.
To do this, the researchers provided a list of items that should be considered while creating a new evaluation instrument. They are divided into three categories corresponding to the principal concepts: useful, meaningful, and equitable. Educative usefulness contains feedback and decisions, while practical usefulness refers to feasibility and efficiency. Meaning can be either relevant or accurate, in which case the former describes content and tasks, whereas the latter relates to their validity and reliability. Equitability can be either open, implying participation and disclosure, or appropriate referring to fairness and impact. Hence, these concepts cover all possible principles and items proposed by the authors.
The Selected Items for Evaluation
The selected items for evaluation of ELL students’ assessments are feedback and fairness. The former relates to the concept of usefulness and the educative principle. It implies the provision of information on the timeliness of the assessment, the quality of students’ work, and the prospective use of scores and reports by stakeholders (Smith et al., 2004). Feedback has different forms, and the most common ones include content situated, dialogic, empathetic, acknowledging fluidity, and vulnerability types (Torres, Strong, & Adesope, 2020). The latter, fairness, belongs to the concept of equitability and the principle of appropriateness. It implies teachers’ assessment literacy and essential quality of the educational process (Rasooli, Zandi, & DeLuca, 2018). The combination of these items seems beneficial in terms of the evaluation of students’ work.
The Importance of the Selected Items
The importance of the selected items is defined by previous research. The study proved that feedback is extremely beneficial for achieving better summative marks for the course by students (Morrell, 2019). Hence, it can be used as a mechanism for improving their learning results, which is especially vital when it comes to ELL students. Moreover, feedback helps students use disciplinary language, provides them with opportunities to respond and reflect, and supports their confidence in writing (Torres et al., 2020). The second item, fairness, complements the feedback by giving access to reliable information, increasing transparency, and creating a constructive classroom (Rasooli et al., 2018). Thus, the combination of feedback and fairness will be appropriate for ELL students since it addresses their needs.
Conclusion
To sum up, the initiative intended to improve students’ assessment tools while considering their sociocultural specificities implies the use of various concepts, principles, and items. They all have their benefits, but feedback and fairness seem to be better options for the needs of people from diverse backgrounds. The former establishes the connection between stakeholders, whereas the latter provides opportunities for further development. Thus, their use for the program aimed at ELL students will be beneficial.
References
Morrell, L. J. (2019). Iterated assessment and feedback improves student outcomes. Studies in Higher Education, 1-12.
Rasooli, A., Zandi, H., & DeLuca, C. (2018). Re-conceptualizing classroom assessment fairness: A systematic meta-ethnography of assessment literature and beyond. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 56, 164-181.
Smith, M. E., Teemant, A., & Pinnegar, S. (2004). Principles and practices of sociocultural assessment: Foundations for effective strategies for linguistically diverse classrooms. Multicultural Perspectives, 6(2), 38-46.
Torres, J. T., Strong, Z. H., & Adesope, O. O. (2020). Reflection through assessment: A systematic narrative review of teacher feedback and student self-perception. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 64.