Developing Testing Accommodations for English Language Learners: Illustrations as Visual Supports for Item Accessibility

Mitigating the effect of language in the assessment of science: A study of English‐language learners in primary classrooms in the United Kingdom

“…For example, the provision of extra time; or permitting students to take assessments written in, and equally respond in, their first language. Importantly, in this regard, while we find no evidence in our study that the presence of illustrations affects performance, it may be that, as suggested by Solano-Flores et al (2014) this is dependent upon the cultural group under consideration and the specific design of the illustration (see Lohse, Biolsi, Walker, & Rueter, 1994, for a potential approach to classification of visuals). Alternatively, it may be that, as in the case of multilingual assessments, students need instruction and formative practice in the classroom to make best use of visuals when they are provided in an assessment.…”

“…She concluded however that this may have been down to the small sample size. Solano-Flores (2014) and Wang (2012) have recently proposed, from a semiotics perspective, that use of visual illustrations in assessment protocols may make a difference to the relative performance of ELLs as long as they have certain skills (unrelated to content knowledge) to use them. They also suggest that, due to cultural differences, different communities may require different illustrations to aid them.…”

“…However, the level of empirical support for this is currently unclear. Wang () focused mainly on patterns of correlations or multiple independent analysis of variances for which the determination of statistical significance is hindered by the issue of multiple testing; while Solano‐Flores, Wang, Kachchaf, Soltero‐Gonzalez, and Nguyen‐Le () found, in their pilot study, no evidence for an interaction between language and presence of illustrations in determining assessment performance. These investigations have also focused on middle‐school education rather than primary.…”

State English learner education policy: A conceptual framework to guide comprehensive policy action

“…A 2009 meta-analysis found heterogeneity across different accommodation effects, and only one, the provision of English dictionaries or glossaries, had an overall significant effect on EL performance (Kieffer, Lesaux, Rivera, and Francis, 2009). To be effective, students must be familiar with, and able to utilize, specific accommodations (Solano- Flores et al, 2014;Wolf, Kim, & Kao, 2012). Because EL students have rich multilingual skills, some scholars and practitioners advocate for tests that allow students to use their full linguistic repertoires without penalization for moving fluidly between languages (Ascenzi-Moreno, 2018).…”

Considerations for Providing Test Translation Accommodations to English Language Learners on Common Core Standards‐Based Assessments

“…For this reason, framework documents have been written to guide the design of certain accommodations. For instance, to guide the assessments to be developed by Smarter Balanced, Solano‐Flores () identified challenges in developing effective translation accommodations for culturally and linguistically diverse students and discussed the limitations and potentials of four translation accommodations in relation to fairness and validity considerations. This framework document emphasizes the urgent need to understand the challenges and promises in pursuing translation accommodations when compared with other accommodations, such as linguistic modification/simplification and the provision of bilingual dictionaries (Abedi, Courtney, Mirocha, Leon, & Goldberg, ).…”