Literature Review

Science Performance Assessments and the Language

Demands of English Language Learners

Prepared by: Mona Naim

Date: April 22, 2021

Submitted to: Dr. Sara Salloum

Course: EDUC 352 - Evaluation and Assessment

1
 Literature Review

Introduction

Science is complex since it requires learning to observe, predict, analyze, summarize, and

express information in diverse ways; these ways vary between oral expression, writing, and

transforming figures to cohesive scientific texts (Lee & Fradd, 1998). It is reasoned that English

Language Learners (ELLs) have a harder time engaging in science inquiry meaningfully,

because they are acquiring English language literacy and content understanding at the same time

(Fradd and Lee 1999; Kelly-Jackson and Delacruz 2014). All students, especially ELLs, need

specialized support from science teachers during instruction and while designing an assessment

for the science material being taught. Performance assessments more directly measure key

inquiry-based skills, such as conducting an investigation, as opposed to traditional paper-and-

pencil tests. In terms of assessment, several studies document significant links between students’

level of proficiency in English and their performance on content-based assessments (Abedi,

2002; Abedi & Lord, 2001; Abedi, Lord, Hofstetter, & Baker, 2000; Johnson & Monroe, 2004;

Shaftel, Belton-Kocher, Glasnapp & Poggio, 2006 as cited in Lyon, Bunch, and Shaw 2012).

In Lebanon, students learn science in foreign language and hence their content area

achievement is being assessed in English. Some students who have weak language cannot

understand science well and do not perform well in the exams. Bou Jaoude, S., and Mneimneh,

N. (2019, October 2) claimed students' performance in the TIMSS (Trends in International

Mathematics and Science) examination is influenced by the instructional strategy

and the devastating results are mostly due to the language effect that was also emphasized by

Salloum, S., Younis, R., and Antoun, M. (2019, October 4) where they added the social

2
and economic standards. This reality adds further urgency to equity concerns regarding the issue

of language and assessment. Equity in assessment should be imposed by science teachers who

must help students build bridges between their known and familiar ways of using language, and

the academic ways of using language. Therefore, teachers have a vital role in supporting ELLs to

improve and achieve better results.

In this mini-literature review, I am going to review some articles about the relationship

between science assessments and the language demands of ELLs. Moreover, I will refer to

literature to elaborate the proposed steps and tools that science teachers can follow as they design

and refine their own set of science assessments to develop culturally and linguistically valid

cultural assessments that incorporate support for ELLs.

Science Assessments and the Language Demands of ELLs

Buxton, Harman, Cardozo-Gaibisso, Jiang, Bui, and Allexsaht-Snider (2019) investigated

the connections between science and language through analyzing student responses to a bilingual

(English- Spanish) constructed response assessment that the researchers and teachers designed

and administered in schools that have English Learners (ELs) among its students. The authors

found that the assessment was largely supportive of bilingual learners and was designed to

support a translanguaging approach to multilingual meaning-making. In addition, they noticed

that some students made language choices that began to show awareness of the role that word

choice and patterns of language use play in science sense-making. Students were also learning to

make use of the bilingual and multimodal resources embedded in the assessment. However,

researchers found that bilingual learners can express grade appropriate ideas about science

content when they are able to start with more familiar language to help them process scientific

thinking. Besides, the authors found that the insights they developed through the collaborative

3
explorations with teachers during the workshops held have continued to push their thinking in

new directions about how to better support the integration of science and language practices

thereby designing instructional and assessment tasks with more intentional language scaffolding.

This research work that was done by Buxton, Harman, Cardozo-Gaibisso, Jiang, Bui, and

Allexsaht-Snider in 2019 with secondary school science teachers showed that bilingual

constructed response assessments can be a very good solution to help ELs understand science

and perform better on their assessments. However, many bilingual learners continued to struggle

in using scientific discourse that extended beyond concrete language and examples. In my

opinion to lessen this struggle among ELs, teachers are advised to use SPAs as they are

interactive in nature and allow for the possibility of supporting students in a number of ways not

typically possible on traditional paper-and-pencil tests. This support that SPAs provide to ELs

was further clarified in the article by Lyon, Bunch, and Shaw (2012) who did an entire

performance of the SPA in three grade five classrooms. The enacted SPA that was conducted by

Lyon, Bunch, and Shaw (2012) examined the language challenges faced by students who are

non-native speakers of English (i.e., English Learners or ELs) in U.S. classrooms. The authors

found that this type of inquiry-based SPA disclosed various language demands that the students

encounter. Such interactive and communicative context of assessment made students interact and

use language as they listen and respond to questions from the teacher, discuss and review

observations with group members then write reports individually and read it aloud to the whole

class. Thereby this SPA activity helped in supporting student learning by scaffolding language

(vocabulary list), contextualizing science (story), and setting expectations (rubric). As a

conclusion, students in this SPA encountered a range of options for accessing, engaging in, and

demonstrating the scientific knowledge and abilities at the heart of assessment. The small group

4
interaction they had promoted collaborative inquiry which in itself affords ELs with

opportunities via SPA to enhance their science learning. From my perspective, by

understanding the nature of language demands the teachers can begin incorporating language in

such type of science performance assessments because they turn classroom challenges into

opportunities for ELs.

Science Teachers Learning to Assess Science in Linguistically Diverse Classrooms

Santos, Darling-Hammond, and Cheuk (2013) examined the importance of teachers’

development to support English Language Learners in the context of Common Core State

Standards. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) define the necessary knowledge and

skills in English language arts and mathematics that students need for success in college and

careers. These new standards require students to engage deeply within complex texts, especially

those related to science. Subsequently, these new systems will need to build the capacity of all

educators to serve all students equally, with particular attention to the demands of English

language learners. In order for that to be achieved, teachers need to develop in four specific

areas: Language progressions (how students learn language), language demands (what are

students expected to do with language), language scaffolds (how can teachers use specific

methods to meet the students’ needs), and language supports (the school and classroom roles in

supporting ELLs). In a classroom assessment environment, scaffolds could take various shapes

and forms, such as the teacher reading the question aloud for the student; explaining words,

phrases, and sentences; using the native language as support; connecting to prior knowledge; and

drawing pictures, graphs, or tables.

Similarly, Lyon (2013) explored the assessment expertise of 11 secondary science

preservice teachers as they learned to assess science in linguistically diverse classrooms

5
throughout a yearlong teacher education program at a university in the United States. The author

looked at the growth of their assessment tasks since they started until the end of the year and

noticed the most growth in their expertise at using assessment to support learning. This growth

showed in expanding their repertoire of assessment tasks, considering alignment of assessment

tasks with learning objectives and becoming more knowledgeable of the role of language while

assessing. In addition, the author found that the assessment-focused instruction itself that

happened during the teacher education program contributed toward teacher growth by giving

foundational knowledge about assessment in the context of science education. Thereby to

enhance the growth the author advised that teachers use the following mentioned tools as they

design and refine their own set of science assessments that incorporate support for English

Learners. First, they have to discuss how language influence assessment performance, then

identify the language demands of science assessments. Later they have to discuss support for

English Learners to navigate through various test structures and forms of communication and use

assessment results to plan instruction to support English Learners. Finally, they have to lay out

teaching standards that can promote assessing in ways that take into account sociocultural

influences, such as language proficiency, as well as assess literacy in the content-areas, not just

the content itself.

In other words, teachers’ awareness of the language demands of the students is an essential part

of their learning or development. Teachers that took the teacher education program agreed that

understanding the language demands of the students is a must; however, it is ambiguous whether

the language demands of the science assessment must be reduced or scaffolded from one aspect,

and whether language in science should be assessed from a different aspect.

6
 In addition to the findings proposed by Santos, Darling-Hammond, and Cheuk (2013) and

Lyon (2013), a further elaboration of the steps that science teachers can follow to develop

culturally and linguistically valid cultural assessments was put forward by Turkan and Lopez

(2017). They mentioned that the first step for teachers is to link the Next Generation Science

Standards (NGSS) disciplinary core idea and respective science or engineering practices to the

relevant language functions and objectives explicitly or implicitly stated by the science or

engineering practice. The second step is to identify the applicable assessment method that would

allow ELLs to (a) access the content and language of the assessment and (b) demonstrate their

knowledge and understanding of the scientific content and practice elicited in the assessment.

Third, the task would provide scaffolds that would help ELLs access the language and content of

the assessment and demonstrate their understanding of the content.

Briefly, I think that any test that employs language is, in part, a measure of language

skills. Accordingly, for a teacher to be able to assess students fairly, it is necessary to better

understand the students’ needs. Every teacher has to recognize how language interferes in

students’ opportunities - especially ELLs - to demonstrate what they have learned or to learn.

This manifests the teacher’s responsibilities to provide equal opportunities for students with

different demands. This can be done by focusing on scaffolding and providing various

opportunities-language wise- instead of reducing language in assessment. Science performance

assessments have their own language demands that need be understood and specific actions must

be implemented accordingly. For that to happen, both pre-service and in-service teachers should

be properly prepared to create both the dispositions and competencies to serve all students

equally.

Conclusion

7
 In summary, these articles focused on the potential challenges facing ELLs during

science performance assessments and bilingual constructed response assessments as well as

opportunities afforded by such assessments for demonstrating their knowledge and skills and the

important role that teachers can play to support ELLs. It is extremely important to realize that

teachers cannot act, if they cannot see the students’ needs and this shows clear in the enacted

SPA conducted by Lyon, Bunch, and Shaw (2012) because analyzing the video footages later

revealed a lot of student needs that teachers should be aware of. In addition, the Systemic

Functional Linguistics ideational and textual meaning systems and the Legitimation Code

Theory code of semantics that were used by Buxton, Harman, Cardozo-Gaibisso, Jiang, Bui, and

Allexsaht-Snider (2019) to analyze the bilingual constructed response assessment allowed the

researchers to explore the emergent understanding of students via their assessment responses.

Furthermore, teachers must undergo certain programs that help them attain deeper

understanding of content and mastery of instructional strategies so that they can assist diverse

students with different demands. This appeared genuine during the work of Buxton, Harman,

Cardozo-Gaibisso, Jiang, Bui, and Allexsaht-Snider (2019) because they found out that teacher

discussions during the assessment workshops were beneficial to guide teachers for a better

integration of language and science in secondary classes for English Learners.

However, the multi-perspective analysis done by Buxton, Harman, Cardozo-Gaibisso,

Jiang, Bui, and Allexsaht-Snider (2019) will be increasingly necessary as a new generation of

science learning frameworks are being introduced in diverse parts of the globe but further

research is needed to deepen the understanding of the complex relationship between conceptual

learning and language because the future science assessments will be of high stakes nature. In

addition, based on the work done by Lyon, Bunch, and Shaw (2012) I suggest further research to

8
be done on the topic of language demands and science assessment to identify specific types of

language demands common in science assessment. As example, future research could develop a

typology of common science assessment participant structures and use them during analysis. In

addition, ethnographic research with extended interviews and participant observation, could help

clarify the experience of ELs as they navigate the language demands of SPAs. Also, researchers

can examine the relationship between how ELs navigate the language demands of SPAs and their

performance on them.

To end with, interactions are of great importance to ELLs in the assessment process. The

more they interact (with the teacher or one another), the better they grasp and perform. I learned

that even though performance assessments pose certain challenges, they also present

opportunities for ELs because they expand the means at students’ disposal to learn and

demonstrate science understanding and skills and create spaces for them to further develop

proficiency in English.

9
 References

Abedi, J. (2002). Standardized achievement tests and english language learners: Psychometrics

issues. Educational Assessment, 8(3), 231-257. 

https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326977EA0803_02

Abedi, J., Lord, C., Hofstetter, C., & Baker, E. (2000). Impact of accommodation strategies on

english language learners' test performance. Educational Measurement, Issues and

Practice, 19(3), 16-26. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-3992.2000.tb00034.x

Abedi, J., & Lord, C. (2001). The language factor in mathematics tests. Applied Measurement in

Education, 14(3), 219-234. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15324818AME1403_2

Bou Jaoude, S., & Mneimneh, N. (2019, October 2). Is education in Lebanon really very good

compared to arab countries and is matched by European countries? Annahar 26962.

Buxton, C., Harman, R., Cardozo-Gaibisso, L., Jiang, L., Bui, K., & Allexsaht-Snider, M.

(2019). Understanding science and language connections: New approaches to assessment

with bilingual learners. Research in Science Education (Australasian Science Education

Research Association), 49(4), 977-988. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-019-9846-8

Turkan, S., & Lopez, A. (2017). Helping English language learners access the language and

content of science through the integration of culturally and linguistically valid assessment

practices. In de Oliveira L. C., Campbell Wilcox K. (Eds.), Teaching science to english

language learners: Preparing pre-service and in-service teachers. Springer International

Publishing AG. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53594-4

Fradd, S. H., & Lee, O. (1999). Research news and comment: Teachers’ roles in promoting

science inquiry with students from diverse language backgrounds. Educational

Researcher, 28(6), 14-42. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X028006014

10
Johnson, E., & Monroe, B. (2004). Simplified language as an accommodation on math

tests. Assessment for Effective Intervention, 29(3), 35-45. 

https://doi.org/10.1177/073724770402900303

Kelly-Jackson, C., & Delacruz, S. (2014). Using visual literacy to teach science academic

language: Experiences from three preservice teachers. Action in Teacher

Education, 36(3), 192-210. https://doi.org/10.1080/01626620.2014.917364

Lee, O., & Fradd, S. H. (1998). Science for all, including students from non-english-language

backgrounds. Educational Researcher, 27(4), 12-21. 

https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X027004012

Lyon, E. G., Bunch, G. C., & Shaw, J. M. (2012). Navigating the language demands of an

inquiry‐based science performance assessment: Classroom challenges and opportunities

for english learners. Science Education (Salem, Mass.), 96(4), 631-651. 

https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21008

Lyon, E. (2013). Learning to assess science in linguistically diverse classrooms: Tracking growth

in secondary science preservice teachers’ assessment expertise. Science Education, 97(3),

442-467. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21059

Salloum, S., Younis, R., & Antoun, M. (2019, October 4). Is the language the most influential on

the performance of Lebanese students? Annahar 26964.

Santos, M., Darling-Hammond, L., & Cheuk, T. (2012). Teacher development to support English

language learners in the context of common core state standards. Paper presented at the

Understanding Language Conference, Stanford, CA. Retrieved from http://ell.

stanford.edu/papers

11
Shaftel, J., Belton-Kocher, E., Glasnapp, D., & Poggio, J. (2006). The impact of language

characteristics in mathematics test items on the performance of English language learners

and students with disabilities. Educational Assessment, 11(2), 105 – 126.  

https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326977ea1102_2

12