TESOL Standard 4: Assessment

Reflection

1. Implicit Bias

Teaching philosophies, pedagogical practices, and educational perspectives vary from culture to culture. Being aware of our implicit biases can make all the difference for students. Recognizing students' cultural identities helps foster a sense of community and increases tolerance for ambiguity and diversity. Cuturally responsive assessments improve student learning and authentically document what students know and can do.

2. High-Stakes Tests

A growing concern in education is how to address the balancing act between developing the potential of the individual and improving society. For example, high-stakes tests create an emphasis on cognitive learning to the point of jeopardizing the moral domain. According to Paul Branwell (2016), adoption of the Common Core State Standards forced schools to set unrealistic targets “that ultimately elevated standardized testing and severely narrowed curricula; quantifying academic gains remains at the forefront of school improvement efforts to the detriment of other worthwhile purposes of schooling” (p. 5).

Universally designed tests, e.g., interim measures and high-stakes tests, are unreliable and designed with a low face validity in testing English language learners. These tests are primarily developed for and tested on native speakers of English and those proficient in academic English. They do not consider the support and accommodations English language learners require to succeed or address the factors that could affect their performance, such as time spent living in the United States, level of language proficiency, level of literacy, instruction in the home language for a particular content area, experience with technology, or documented disability.

3. Assessment Accommodations

English language learners often have difficulty understanding the language and procedure of assessments; the setback is more profound in students with a learning disability. A change in tone or a slight change in body language from the teacher may hinder learners from focusing on the assessment. Teachers disrupt the assessment processes when students focus more on the teacher or the instruction rather than the assessment itself. Teachers need to be conscious of these challenges, and other barriers as learners may require special accommodations.

4. Comprehensible Input and Feedback

Careful observation and informal interactions between teachers and students are important ways to discover student strengths, weaknesses, and motivation. Teachers who provide continuous feedback on content and language objectives promote the development of social and academic language. English language learners are poised to improve more readily when teachers provide feedback regularly.

5. Self-Assessment as an Autonomous Learning Tool

Assessment has traditionally been the teacher’s responsibility. It is advantageous for teachers to share the responsibility of assessment with students. Student self-assessment and peer-assessment are powerful tools that help students move toward independence in their thinking and doing. Self-assessment is a student-centered approach. It facilitates self-regulated learning and promotes direct involvement in the task at hand. There is an array of formats teachers can readily integrate into instruction.

This method helps build students’ metacognitive awareness. At the same time, teachers collect insightful data about the students. It also promotes student accountability while allowing the teacher to have a greater focus on the instruction.