Assessments that require students to articulate their scientific models in English can be challenging for multilingual learners, who may lack the language proficiency to do so. In response to these increasing language demands, we have developed a digital science modeling assessment task that is adaptable to these students' linguistic and semiotic resources, enabling them to demonstrate their knowledge and skills. A pilot study involving 32 multilingual learners in the United States revealed their ability to use various linguistic resources and multiple language modes to create, describe, and explain their models. The study underscores the importance of assessments that promote translanguaging, allowing students to exhibit their science learning through various representations and catering to the diverse needs of multilingual learners. The findings of this study are likely to influence the design of digital content assessments that enable multilingual learners to utilize translanguaging to demonstrate their knowledge and skills.

With the growing English learner population, this study identifies issues of fairness around cut score setting practices that impact English learner (EL) classifications and reclassifications in the US context. High-stakes decisions regarding the education of ELs have relied mostly on English language proficiency (ELP) assessments and the ELP-related classifications. The ELP-related classifications are central to ELs’ life cycles in US schooling. These classifications impact decisions as to whom to designate as EL, whom to administer content assessments to, and who benefits from instructional support programmes. This study examines the practices in the US pre-and post- ‘Every Child Succeeds Act’ (ESSA) of 2015 and takes a dynamic multilingualism perspective to discuss what validity evidence is missing in the current classification practices and what could be done to better align the classification practices with the dynamic languaging practices of multilingual learners.

In this article we explore the use of pictorial glossaries as an accommodation for English learners (ELs) with entry and emerging levels of English language proficiency. Drawing on survey responses from 98 middle school ELs and cognitive interviews with 10 of the survey participants, we examined the participants’ preferences and experiences with using accommodations and explored how some of them responded to NAEP mathematics items using pictorial glossaries. Our findings showed that the participants viewed the use of pictures, videos, and translations as useful, but they did not have a lot of experience using these types of accommodations. Also, we found that the pictorial glosses sometimes helped ELs with understanding the local meaning of words in the mathematics problems but not with the global meaning conveyed at the sentence level in the problems.

The study reported in this article investigated the design and implementation of a flexible bilingual mathematics assessment that allows for translanguaging whenever needed, to help the mathematics knowledge of emergent bilingual students emerge. The assessment included 10 mathematics items, six selected-response and four constructed-response items, which were enhanced with dual language supports such as seeing and listening to the items, writing or saying a response, and showing synonyms for certain words, all in English, Spanish, or any combination of both languages. These supports allow test takers to draw on their entire linguistic repertoire and their full range of linguistic practices to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in mathematics. Ten emergent bilingual students participated in cognitive interviews designed to collect data on usability and perception of the usefulness of the dual language supports. It was found that students were able to use the available supports strategically whenever needed, used their entire linguistic repertoire to complete the items, and had a positive perception of the supports.

Due to rising demand for qualified teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL), interest in issues pertaining to the language proficiency of these teachers has increased. However, research focusing on the teaching tasks that EFL teachers engage in for the purposes of EFL instruction is scant. The present study aims to address this gap in the literature by identifying the teaching tasks and exploring the teaching practices reported in logs kept by 5 EFL teachers over the course of a 2-week period. Findings suggest that the majority of language teaching tasks observed in the teachers' logs were related to the instructional stages of (a) presenting subject material and communicating lesson content and (b) planning, developing, and organizing instruction.

Translanguaging refers to the flexible use of the bilingual repertoire. In this report, we provide a theoretical framework to support the use of translanguaging to assess the academic content knowledge of newly arrived emergent bilingual students. In this report, we argue that translanguaging offers newly arrived emergent bilingual students the opportunity to demonstrate what they know and can do even if their English language and literacy skills are not fully developed. We propose two principles for incorporating translanguaging into initial content assessments for late-arriving emergent bilingual students, and we theorize how translanguaging can be used within an assessment context by discussing test design applications and considerations. We also discuss some challenges when incorporating translanguaging within an assessment context.

The student population in the U.S. and worldwide is becoming increasingly diverse, creating a need to support all learners, especially linguistically and culturally diverse subpopulations such as English language learners (ELLs). From a social equity standpoint, the need to support these learners is critical especially in mathematics classrooms. In the U.S, the demand for mathematics teachers who are adequately prepared to teach ELLs has in fact risen. Yet, little is known about what knowledge base is essential to teach mathematics to ELLs. Driven by the need to explore this knowledge base, in this paper I explore what is involved in reasoning about teaching mathematics to ELLs. To this end, a set of instructional scenarios illustrating the work of teaching mathematics to ELLs was utilized within an assessment environment. Interviews with 10 mathematics teachers reasoning about the scenarios showed that they drew on the information provided about ELLs' proficiency levels while reasoning through the scenarios. Also, teachers' reasoning seems to be qualified by the extent to which they could both use their content knowledge in mathematics and modify their instructional choices according to ELLs' language needs specified in the scenarios. This study motivates large-scale future studies examining what systematic teacher knowledge base might differentiate good teaching for ELLs from good teaching for all students.

The current interest in evaluating teachers and teacher education programs provides an opportunity to consider the education of diverse learners in K-12 schools in the United States. We address teaching English language learners (ELLs), a rapidly growing population. Challenges lie in holding content teachers of ELLs accountable as they are not adequately prepared to teach ELLs. In this article, we outline complexities surrounding the definition of the quality of teaching content to ELLs, provide an overview of existing teacher evaluation instruments, and discuss the difficulties in using ELL test scores to estimate the teacher contributions to academic growth of ELLs.