Bi/multilingual testing for bi/multilingual students: policy, equality, justice, and future challenges

ABSTRACT

Notwithstanding the introduction of education multilingual policies worldwide, testing and assessment procedures still rely almost exclusively on the monolingual construct. This paper describes a study, part of a larger project fostering a new multilingual education policy in Israeli schools, exploring bi/multilingual assessment. It included two types of second language learners—immigrants from the Former Soviet Union, who learn all their school subjects in Hebrew, and Arab students, whose school language of instruction is Arabic but who learn some subjects in Hebrew. The experimental groups received a bilingual version of a test (Hebrew-Russian; Hebrew Arabic) and the control groups a Hebrew-only version. In the Russian-speaking experimental group, students received significantly higher scores than in the control group, while no significant differences surfaced between the groups among the Arabic-speaking students. Yet, attitudes toward bilingual assessment, evaluated via questionnaires, think aloud protocols and focus groups, were highly positive in both groups, addressing the availability of L1 in the test as contributing greatly to a more relaxed and positive approach. Multilingual tools emerged as a fairer method of assessing knowledge for second-language learners, who cannot fully demonstrate their academic knowledge in L2, and their use is recommended as part of the new multilingual policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Bi/multilingual assessment
• academic knowledge
• second language learners
• immigrants
• think aloud protocol
• Israel

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This test is called Meitzav, which is a national test developed by RAMA—the National Authority for Assessment and Evaluation affiliated with the Ministry of Education in Israel. Meitzav aims to measure school efficacy and assess scholastic achievements in several subjects.

2 All names are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by the Chief scientist, Ministry of Education, Israel [Grant Number 9856].

Notes on contributors

Elana Shohamy

Prof. Elana Shohamy is a Professor of Multilingual Education at Tel Aviv University where she teaches and researches various issues of multilingualism as they relate to language testing, language policy, immigration, linguistic landscape from a perspective of criticality and social justice. She authored The Power of Tests: A Critical Perspective on the Uses of Language Tests (2001), Language Policy: Hidden Agendas and New Approaches (2006), and edited Testing and Assessment volumes of The Encyclopedia of Language and Education (Springer, 2009 and 2018).

Michal Tannenbaum

Prof. Michal Tannenbaum is an associate professor and the head of the Program for Multilingual Education, School of Education, Tel Aviv University. Her research interests and teaching areas include linguistic patterns of minority groups, psychological and emotional aspects of immigration, inter-group relations, and the exploration of meeting points between language issues and arts. In recent years she develops together with Prof Shohamy a new multilingual education policy in the Israeli education system.

Anna Gani

Anna Gani has completed her BA in Chinese as a second language from Sun-Yat Sen University in Guangzhou, China and a MA degree in multilingual education at Tel Aviv University. Her thesis explored immigrant students’ perceptions towards bilingual assessment, its advantages, weaknesses, and suggestions for assessing bi/multilingual students. She is now enrolled as a Ph.D. student at the program for Multilingual Education in Tel Aviv University.