Question
How do I ensure validity is present when assessing a second language learner?
Answer
As clinicians, many of us have been trained to look at instruments, demographics and statistics to help ensure the validity of an assessment.
In the case of the second language learner, we have very few standardized assessments. Those which we do have are largely in Spanish. When you are working in a school with 26 languages from 5 continents, you find yourself wondering about the best ways to ensure validity.
Collaboration and observations are the key concepts which we must keep in mind. That means a team of people which includes everyone who has an influence upon the student's life, the parent/caregiver, the lunch lady, the classroom teacher, the instructional assistant, cultural informant, after school program teacher, special-ed. team members and others to numerous to mention, must be involved. Our second language learners must be distinguished from ESL children with special needs. We can only do this by having all of the team members see the same/similar behavior, performance, skills across settings.
Within this collaboration, we need an observational structure. This might be a scale used across a variety of settings. The work of Elizabeth Pena and others addresses the concept of dynamic assessment. The key component of dynamic assessment is observation of behavior over time. This allows the team to see how quickly a student learns. When the team members all see the same patterns, we know we have validity in our judgments.
Both the ESL only and ESL/LDD students are able to master the same material. However, the rate of progress for an ESL only student is accelerated. Our like observations about rate of learning allow us to make this determination and ensure validity. We cannot count on standardized testing (if even available) alone.
This Ask the Expert was taken from the course entitled: Eight Best Practices in Assessing the Second Language Learner: Part I presented by Jomar Lococo, M.S. CCC-SLP.
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Jomar Lococo has been a speech-language pathologist in practice since 1974. Since 1985, Ms. Lococo has provided professional services to second language learners from five continents. She has lectured extensively on topics addressing work with second language learners. Ms. Lococo has been an invited speaker in local school districts, regional offices of education and has given presentations at both state and national conventions.