A multilingual approach to analysing standardized test results: immigrant primary school children and the role of languages spoken in a bi-/multilingual community

Abstract

The present study adopts a multilingual approach to analysing the standardized test results of primary school immigrant children living in the bi-/multilingual context of South Tyrol, Italy. The standardized test results are from the Invalsi test administered across Italy in 2009/2010. In South Tyrol, several languages are spoken on a daily basis and the long-established ethnic groups are speakers of German (69%), Italian (26%) and Ladin (4%). While the language of instruction for immigrant children attending Italian language schools is Italian, these children live in Italian-or German-speaking environments. I argue that standardized testing data should be analysed in conjunction with local language information to better serve the educational needs of bi-/multilingual children. The Italian test results of I and II Generation immigrant children (n = 225) are re-examined in light of the languages spoken in their living environment. Results show that the approach used is useful in identifying information that would have otherwise remained undetected. The additional data provide valuable input for school administrators, educators and policy-makers and can be used to devise suitable remedial measures for immigrant children attending school in bi-/multilingual environments.

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: A Canadian Perspective

“…In the current educational zeitgeist, norm-referenced standardized assessment methods are increasingly being used to assess where a given student is academically located, compared to their peers. These forms of assessment are usually administered in the country's official language(s) of instruction (De Angelis, 2014) and make use of a Eurocentric approach to learning (Ryan et al, 2013). However, many studies have demonstrated the need for more culturally appropriate assessment methods specifically with regard to newly immigrated EAL students and FNMI students (De Angelis, 2014;Sefa Dei & McDermott, 2014;James, 2017;Ryan et al, 2013).…”

“…These forms of assessment are usually administered in the country's official language(s) of instruction (De Angelis, 2014) and make use of a Eurocentric approach to learning (Ryan et al, 2013). However, many studies have demonstrated the need for more culturally appropriate assessment methods specifically with regard to newly immigrated EAL students and FNMI students (De Angelis, 2014;Sefa Dei & McDermott, 2014;James, 2017;Ryan et al, 2013). In fact, monolingual biases resulting from the administration of standardized assessments (Brown, 2013) have been shown to be an unfair practice regarding multilingual students as they are asked to perform in a second language and thus have lower chances of succeeding, compared to their monolingual peers (May, 2011).…”

Standardized Entrance/Aptitude Testing in the Era of Foucault’s Panopticon: The Bilingual Student and the Minority Student

“…In practice, the standardized aptitude examination is far from fair. Even though some researchers (Berry et al, 2014; Duran, 1983; Engelhard et al, 2014; Pennock-Roman, 1990; Scheiber, 2017; Zwick & Sklar, 2005), for example, state that bilingual students do relatively poorly on standardized aptitude and entrance examinations simply because this is a reflection of their poor academic achievement in the educational settings overall, an overwhelming amount of research does show that those students for whom English is not a first language or those students who are bilingual, do not score as well in the aptitude test as their first language English-speaking peers and their monolingual English-speaking peers (Angelis, 2014; Haitana et al, 2010; Saenz & Huer, 2003; White & Jin, 2011). Pearson (1993) has studied bilingual students, comparing them with monolingual students in Florida with regard to their SAT scores and their grade point average (GPA) scores to see whether bilingual students perform at a relatively lower level than their monolingual peers or if they perform on par with their monolingual peers.…”