to improve teaching and learning. It acknowledges that the field of language assessment is moving from a technical or cognitive‐based activity for generating scores to a socially embedded process (Bachman & Damböck, 2017).
Influenced by social constructivism and Vygotskyan theory, today's assessment in the classroom is an interactive process in which teachers and students work together to support learners' progress to the next step in their learning within their zone of proximal development (Sardareh & Saad, 2012). As a socially constructed process, classroom assessment is embedded in a context of stakeholders' perspectives that includes those of school leaders, teachers, students, and family members as meaningful educational partners. Assessment in the classroom is also becoming more inclusive of student voice which is beginning to be heard as a co‐contributor, facilitated by teachers, to individual goals for learning along with accompanying evidence of reaching them.
The notion of assessment as a process rather than an event is congruent with educational assessment literature that categorizes classroom assessment as an integral component of curriculum design and the instructional cycle (Cumming, 2009). For multilingual or plurilingual learners, curriculum is a dynamic interplay between language and content within instruction and assessment. Figure 1 illustrates the relationship among classroom assessment, curriculum, and instruction during learning.
Figure 1 The interaction of curriculum, instruction, and classroom assessment during learning
Within this educational context, theories of curriculum, instruction, and learning inform choices about classroom assessment practice. From a traditional psychometric perspective, testing is viewed as a discrete activity that is summative in nature (Moss, 2008). For some, the term “testing” assumes that students act alone. Additionally, in this traditional vein, language ability for multilingual learners can be considered a stable, fixed trait (Swain, Kinnear, & Steinman, 2011). In classrooms shaped by this view, teachers deliver instruction and, at the end of the lesson or unit, use tests to measure what students have learned, often drawing on test materials provided in commercial course packs or by external agencies. As a result, data‐driven decisions often rely on extrinsic rewards and punishments to pressure students (and teachers) to improve.
In the emerging assessment culture of the 21st century, however, the connection between learning and assessment is more tightly drawn as teachers are challenged to take on a more active role and focus on multilingual learners' language development within content learning. Attention is also centered on students' engagement in classroom tasks, their interaction with peers, and discussion with their teachers. Thus, from a sociocultural view, assessment in the classroom is a series of mediated, goal‐driven activities where language use and performance are malleable, shaped by the audience, situation, and context.
Shepard, Penuel, and Davidson (2017) identify two guiding principles that shape today's assessment at a local level. “First, make assessments coherent (by) integrating them with rich curriculum and effective instruction and second, ground this integration of curriculum, instruction, and embedded assessments in equity‐focused research on learning” (p. 1). From these principles, they propose unique approaches to formative assessment that view the classroom in different ways. The research‐based premises of a sociocultural stance center on the social nature of learning and development, with a focus on student participation in disciplinary ways of knowing and doing. There is explicit allowance and acceptance for student engagement in academic content and practices through a variety of entry points and for students to follow personalized pathways to achievement. Following a sociocultural stance, a key purpose for assessment is to match information about students' experiences and their interests with their goals for learning in order to create a classroom community of practice.
Congruent with this approach, Moss (2008) also draws on sociocultural theory to describe assessment in terms of a range of evidence that can address student‐generated questions or inquiries in learning. With learning viewed as an interactive process among learners, activities/tasks, resources, and others within a specific context, a more adaptive and dynamic notion of assessment emerges that is concomitant with an expanded role for teachers and students in designing, implementing, and interpreting assessment. A similar perspective on classroom assessment is appearing in discussions of language learning as researchers examine the relationship among assessment, feedback, and learning (Davison & Leung, 2009).
Approaches of Classroom Assessment
The confluence of constructivist learning principles, sociocultural views of assessment, and task‐based communicative approaches in language teaching has resulted in the use of multiple approaches to language assessment that extend the repertoire of tools and resources of teachers to support classroom learning. These tools go beyond paper‐and‐pencil or online tests at the end of a unit of learning. The language and greater educational communities have embraced a broad range of performance‐based curricular projects or products as expressions of learning. These encompass student models, exhibitions, and multimedia presentations, coupled with accompanying rubrics or performance criteria. Additionally, portfolio assessment focuses on the collection of an integrated set of language and content tasks that are embedded within instructional activities.
This expansion of what is acceptable as evidence extends to include an array of assessment approaches useful in the language classroom to meet an array of purposes and student characteristics during teaching and learning. The terms assessment as, for, and of learning (reframed from formative and summative assessment) represent this growth of assessment approaches that moves toward elevating the status of those which are instructionally focused and learner driven (Gottlieb, 2016). In addition, recently coined student‐centered assessment or learner‐oriented assessment are also more inclusive of the role of students in the assessment process (Carless, 2015; Jones & Saville, 2016; Turner & Purpura, 2016).
Figure 2 presents a table (based on an adaptation of Sigman & Mancuso, 2017) that displays a continuum of assessment purposes; it forms an integrated assessment system for language and content based on a time frame. Starting from minute to minute and continuing throughout the academic year, the continuum illustrates how assessment information is integral to the functioning of a classroom and beyond. These multiple assessment approaches highlight a shift in emphasis from ones that have been externally produced for accountability purposes to those which are teacher directed and internal to the classroom, reflective of the local context and individual students.
The classroom assessment literature describes various ways for teachers to collect and judge student performance as part of planned assessment activities within instruction (e.g., Coombe, Folse, & Hubley, 2007; Gottlieb, 2016). A sociocultural view of classroom assessment indicates that assessment also takes place throughout instruction as teachers engage with students, guide student‐to‐student communication, and monitor small group activities. It is the proximity of classroom assessment to instruction that reaps academic benefits for the students, especially for those learners who are actively engaged and receive or give specific timely feedback (Moss & Brookhart, 2009; Heritage, 2010; Wiliam, 2011).
In addition to changing how assessment data are collected, emerging practices in classroom assessment have sharpened the focus on what is assessed, by aligning assessment more closely to learning. When teachers align assessment to instructional objectives or learning targets and then tie them to success criteria, there is greater coherence and more valid inferences for informing decision making about teaching and learning. Thus, when assessment tasks, such as a debate or a dramatization, are designed in light of specific learning targets, such as features of argumentative or persuasive speech, the information collected provides evidence of student
