The community of practice that Ms. Cardenas and her students have fashioned together is participant oriented, with structures and expectations in place that permit ELL students, in particular, to develop the identities of confident, committed, and capable language learners.28 A community of practice is needed for the pedagogical and assessment practices we propose, and we shall return to it in subsequent chapters.
ASSESMENT
During the course of the students’ research study, Ms. Cardenas continuously gathers information about students’ learning through her observations and interactions with students and from examining their work products. This process enables her pedagogical responses, including her feedback, to be contingent upon students’ current level of content and language learning. Of course, the school uses the results of other assessments, including periodic benchmarks and annual assessments of English language proficiency and of college and career ready standards for a range of decision-making purposes, from curricular modifications to professional learning opportunities, but what matters most to Ms. Cardenas in her daily instructional practice is the emphasis in her school on assessment integrated into ongoing teaching and learning.
Ms. Cardenas also involves students in the assessment process, structuring opportunities for self-assessment, for example, by providing review questions as students collect information related to their investigations. In addition, students are invited to engage in peer assessment, providing feedback to each other that helps them reflect on their work. Recall the various opportunities structured into the work sessions, such as when the students provided feedback to each other on the notes they had taken from their reading, or after the presentations of their findings with the sculptures. As we saw, Ms. Cardenas models feedback to the students through her own feedback to them. The students’ ability to provide feedback has been developed through her minilessons on how to give feedback and through her offering students formulaic language expressions (e.g., could you explain, I respectfully disagree, have you thought about) that the students incorporate to ensure that the feedback is constructive. She recognizes that developing students’ skills in giving and receiving feedback is an ongoing process, and she constantly monitors the students’ feedback, offering guidance to individuals and small groups when necessary.
Ms. Cardenas has developed her skills in pedagogy and formative assessment through continuous professional learning opportunities with her colleagues and regular feedback from the principal about her actual classroom practice. Her own experience has accustomed her to professional evaluation—including actionable peer and administrator feedback—that is formative in nature. Moreover, she is used to engaging with her peers in pedagogical planning, including implementing assessment to guide teaching and learning. These support structures and processes have been built into the professional fabric of the school by a committed administrator who understands the value of joint planning for language and content learning with integrated assessment, and who is encouraged and supported to do so by district instructional leaders. This support stands in contrast to many teachers’ experiences, as we will discuss in chapter 6. Ms. Cardenas considers herself very fortunate to work and learn in a school and district that have this orientation, and to have access to the professional learning opportunities that are available to her.
Overview of the Chapters
In the chapters that follow, we address in detail the changes in pedagogy that ELL teachers need to make to achieve the aspirations of college and career ready standards with their students. These practices are brought to life through vignettes of real teachers’ actual classroom practice so that we can see what the practices entail and what knowledge and skills teachers need to accomplish them. We also consider the theoretical perspectives that have historically influenced teachers’ approach to ELL students, and present newer conceptions of teaching and learning for ELLs, grounded in contemporary theory that underpins the practices we describe. Because assessment in its many forms informs pedagogy and many other decisions related to ELLs, we devote two chapters to assessment. In the final chapter, we evaluate the impact and potential of policy on ELLs’ learning.
In this chapter we focus on the reformulation of practice that embraces the simultaneous development of ELLs’ content knowledge and language proficiency. The chapter begins with a discussion of the language-related shifts in instruction that stem from the standards and from recent developments in theory. These shifts are illustrated through detailed examples of classroom practice, showing how the task of successfully educating ELLs for deeper learning in an era of college and career ready standards can be accomplished.
Most teachers think of themselves as practitioners rather than theoreticians, but nearly all teachers’ practice is guided by theory, whether consciously or not. This chapter discusses theories that have traditionally shaped teachers’ pedagogical practices for ELLs, and describes their benefits and limitations. The chapter brings us up to date about recent developments in second-language acquisition that challenge deep-seated assumptions of language teaching, and that ground the idea of reformulated practice to support ELLs in meeting college and career ready standards described in the previous chapter.
Continuing the theme of the reformulation of practices, this chapter addresses assessment integrated into instruction—formative assessment. Through examples of practice, we show how teachers can collect evidence of language and content learning through classroom talk and other means, engage in contingent pedagogy based on the evidence obtained, and involve students in assessment through self- and peer assessment, all in the service of simultaneously learning content, analytical practices, and language.
Beyond immediate teaching and learning in the classroom, educators use assessments to make a range of decisions about ELLs. Beginning with a discussion of how students enter and exit the status of ELL, this chapter focuses on assessments that have a significant impact on ELLs and elaborates on the caution that educators need to take when using the assessments. The chapter also presents some innovations in assessment for ELLs that have the potential to mitigate some of the problems discussed in the chapter with respect to assessing ELL students.
The final chapter considers the role that policy plays in the education of ELLs. It suggests ways in which educators can both respond to and influence policy to meet the goals of the college and career ready standards for ELLs. The chapter also describes how educators can inform policies that support a learning culture for ELLs and their teachers.
We end this introductory chapter with a quote from Alexei Leontiev, a Russian psychologist who worked with Vygotsky. This quote represents a motif for