Aligning assessment strategies to support MLE.

 

PRACTICAL ACTION: Align assessment strategies with the principles of MLE to ensure that learners’ linguistic abilities are recognized as strengths and that assessments accurately reflect learners’ content knowledge, rather than just language proficiency. 

Assessment strategies for MLE include to: 

• Assess in home language: Provide learners with opportunities to be assessed in their home language or mother tongue, especially in the early stages of schooling. This ensures that assessments reflect content understanding rather than proficiency in the official school language. Consideration should also be given to the classroom language used for teaching. 

• Emphasize formative assessment: Use a greater proportion of formative assessments (as opposed to summative assessments) to focus on understanding rather than mere knowledge retention. This approach promotes inclusive teaching practices and supports ongoing student development.

 • Integrate diverse assessment styles: Employ multiple assessment formats (e.g., oral, written, visual) to capture learners’ comprehension of content. Designing assessments that allow for different expressions of understanding ensures that language barriers do not hinder learners from demonstrating content mastery. 

• Adopt holistic evaluation strategies: Implement holistic evaluation methods that celebrate learners’ multilingual skills. Such strategies track both content understanding and progress in language acquisition, encouraging educators and peers to appreciate linguistic diversity as an asset rather than a limitation. 

• Train on equitable assessment practices: Incorporate equitable assessment practices for multilingual learners in both pre- and in-service teacher training programmes. This equips educators with the skills to assess diverse learners effectively, ensuring fair and inclusive evaluations.