Cognitive, Sociolinguistic, and Psychometric Perspectives in Science and Mathematics Assessment for English Language Learners

这个为期两年的拟议项目将调查影响英语学习者在科学和数学评估中的表现的认知和社会语言学影响。它将解决一个事实，即英语学生在科学和数学方面的表现在不同的测试项目和不同的语言之间是不一致的。从该项目中获得的知识将告知从业人员、研究人员和政策制定者关于实现公平测试和获得科学和数学ELLs成就的有效措施的新方法。它将为基于课堂的测试和将语言少数群体纳入大规模测试提供有价值的信息。我们将比较ELL学生的推断认知活动，他们使用的问题解决策略，以及他们在用英语和母语管理的同一组科学和数学项目中获得的分数。此外，我们还将调查使用反映学生母语方言的本地改编版本测试是否以及如何减少语言和项目之间的表现差异。我们将从认知、心理测量和社会语言学三个角度来研究ELLs在不同语言和项目中的表现。这些观点将使我们能够：(1)确定ELL学生接受测试时使用的语言如何影响他们的认知活动以及他们在科学和数学项目上使用的问题解决策略；(2)确定外语学生在本地方言测试中的表现是否优于标准方言版本的测试；(3)考察ELL学生在不同项目和不同语言之间表现的不一致性，这是学生、项目和语言这三个分数变化源的相互作用的结果（即，一个给定的ELL学生在某些项目上的母语表现比英语好，但在其他项目上英语表现比母语好）。我们期望提高我们对认知和社会语言学过程的理解，这些过程是在ELL学生解释和解决问题的过程中在表面之下运作的。我们还希望了解这些过程如何反映在这些学生的表现上，以及他们在不同语言和项目上的得分差异。这些知识将有助于改进基于课堂和大规模的评估实践。最终，我们的目标是通过为语言少数群体的测试提供一种新的方法，为获得更有效的外语学习成绩和更公平的测试实践做出贡献。这种方法认识到语言和认知现象之间的复杂关系，以及语言的社会性质。根据我们在这次调查中获得的知识，我们希望能够正式提出一套改进ELLs测试策略的建议。

This two-year proposed project will investigate the cognitive and sociolinguistic influencesthat shape the performance of English language learners [ELLs] on science and mathematicsassessments. It will address the fact that performance of ELL students in science andmathematics is inconsistent both across test items and across languages. The knowledge gainedfrom this project will inform practitioners, researchers, and policy makers about new approachesfor attaining equitable testing and obtaining valid measures of the achievement of ELLs in science and mathematics. It will provide valuable information relevant to both classroom-basedtesting and the inclusion of linguistic minorities in large-scale testing.We will compare the inferred cognitive activities of ELL students, the problem solutionstrategies they use, and the scores they obtain on the same set of science and mathematics itemsadministered both in English and their native languages. In addition, we will investigate whether and how performance differences across languages and items are reduced when students are tested with locally-adapted versions of tests that reflect their first languages dialects.We will examine the performance of ELLs across languages and items from threeperspectives: cognitive, psychometric, and sociolinguistic. These perspectives will allow us to:(1) determine how the language in which ELL students are tested influences their cognitive activities and the problem solution strategies they use on science and mathematics items; (2)determine whether ELL students perform better on local dialect than standard dialect versions of tests; and (3) examine the inconsistency of ELL student performance across items and acrosslanguages as an interaction of three sources of score variability: student, item, and language (i.e., a given ELL student performs better in his/her native language than in English for some items but better in English than in the native language for other items).We expect to improve our understanding of the cognitive and sociolinguistic processes that operate below the surface as ELL students interpret and solve problems. We also expect to gain knowledge on how these processes are reflected in the performance of these students and the variability of their scores across languages and items. This knowledge will contribute to improving both classroom-based and large-scale assessment practices.GoalsUltimately, our goal is to contribute to attaining more valid measures of ELL academicachievement and more equitable testing practices by offering a fresh approach to the testing of linguistic minorities. This approach recognizes the complex relationship between language and cognitive phenomena, and the social nature of language. From the knowledge we gain in this investigation we expect to be able to formalize a set of recommendations for improved testing policies for ELLs.