Evaluating the Quality of ELA Performance Assessments for Developing Students’ Academic Language Proficiency
Date
2024-04-11
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
According to Wiggins (1989), authentic assessment can help foster students’ deep understanding, higher-order thinking, and complex problem solving through the performance of exemplary tasks. In academic language, authentic assessment consisting of rich and open-ended tasks is deemed to provide students with the opportunity to apply their language skills in real-world contexts. In the context of English language teaching and learning, it is important to ensure that performance assessments replicate the real-world challenges and performance standards as outlined in the intended curriculum to promote students’ learning and mastery of academic language. The authenticity of performance assessments can be determined by well-established criteria. This quantitative study investigated the quality of English Language Arts (ELA) performance assessments, assembled by an external assessment agency to develop elementary (Grades 1–6) students’ academic language proficiency (ALP) with a particular focus on: the authentic intellectual quality of the performance assessments and the alignment between the performance assessments and the learning outcomes as stipulated in the ELA programs of study (i.e., the ELA curriculum). My quantitative analyses included descriptive statistics of 27 ELA performance assessments assembled by an external assessment agency in the Canadian province. The quality of the performance assessments was analyzed using the Koh Authentic Intellectual Quality (AIQ) criteria (2011a). The criteria provided a basis to determine the authenticity and intellectual demands of the ELA performance assessments for engaging student learning and development of ALP. Results indicated that although there was a close alignment between the performance assessments and the intended curriculum in most grade levels, the AIQ of all performance assessments was low. These findings underscore the importance of designing high quality ELA performance assessments for elementary ELA students. High quality performance assessments should place greater emphasis on the intellectual or cognitive demands of the tasks in addition to the authenticity of the tasks. Recommendations are offered on future lines of research that would pave way for a better understanding of the design and use of ELA performance assessments that promote elementary school students’ ALP.
Description
Keywords
Authentic Assessment, Authentic Intellectual Quality, Performance Assessment, ELA, Canada, Learning Outcomes Alignment, Evaluation Study, Professional Learning, Academic Language Proficiency
Citation
Abidi, A. A. (2024). Evaluating the quality of ELA performance assessments for developing students’ academic language proficiency (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.