The Role of Learning Progressions in Standards-Based Education Reform

A Hitchhiker's Guide to Thinking about Literacy, Learning Progressions, and Instruction

“…CPRE's nuanced assessment was that the promise of the construct for use in these ways was modest, and it implied the necessity of a great deal of further empirical design and development work, but it was hopeful (cf. Mosher, 2011).…”

Promoting Validity in the Assessment of English Learners

“…Another area for future research is better mapping of the language development process for assessment development and use. In the area of content assessment, there is currently a great deal of interest in (a) articulating the common cognitive trajectories (often referred to as learning progressions or learning trajectories) that students tend to follow as they develop mastery in a content area (see, Mosher, 2011, for a summary of this trend) and (b) developing both formative and summative assessments whose outcomes provide instructionally relevant diagnostic information about where students stand on such trajectories (Bennett, 2010). Although current consensus holds that ELs likely need 4 to 5 years of instruction to reach AL proficiency (Working Group on ELL Policy, 2010), less conversation has occurred between linguistic researchers and test developers to provide detail about what typically goes on within this period in terms of learning and development, or how such learning could appropriately be modeled.…”

The Role of Language Learning Progressions in Improved Instruction and Assessment of English Language Learners

“…To generate language data informing the progressions, we were challenged to design “items and exercises in such a way that performance on them would provide this kind of evidence [i.e., where students are located in relevant progressions]” (Mosher, , p. 12). Given that language development is not in lock step with grade level, we were additionally challenged to devise tasks that would hold constant the language demands across grades, while allowing students to make the explanation tasks as cognitively easy or demanding as appropriate for their own developmental level.…”