Unpacking the language demands in academic content and English language proficiency standards for English learners

Navigating competing goals for language in curricularized school settings: Lessons from teachers of multilingual students

“…However, our data suggests it can be navigated—though clearly not resolved—through “exploratory” teaching in which there is a “give‐and‐take” (Lampert, 1997, p. 159) between curricularized goals and those of students. Consistent with recent research, teachers in our study experienced language and content curricularization in overlapping ways because of shared language demands (Wolf et al., 2022) and annual testing across content areas. However, they saw this overlap as a strength rather than an impediment: Their beliefs in integrated instruction led them to embrace an approach that rejected traditional “institutionalized language teaching” (Valdés, 2019, p. 114) in favor of collaborative instructional models in which language‐ and content‐focused curricularized goals reinforced rather than competed with each other.…”

“…In classroom settings in which students are learning through an additional language, teachers and students experience language and content curricularization in simultaneous and overlapping ways. This occurs both because ELP and content‐area standards share many similar language demands (Wolf et al., 2022) and because students are tested on multiple standards (e.g., math, science, ELA, and ELP) each year. Although content standards are sometimes privileged over ELP standards in discussions of policy, practice, and accountability (Morita‐Mullaney, 2017), schools still face a range of consequences for not demonstrating progress on ELP assessments.…”

Achievement and Growth on English Language Proficiency and Content Assessments for English Learners in Elementary Grades

“…It also suggests that the types of language knowledge and skills (i.e., language demands) reflected in the current ELP assessments of the study align with those in content assessments. In a recent alignment study (Wolf et al., 2022), the researchers in fact found a significant overlap in terms of sophisticated language demands between college and career readiness standards (e.g., the Common Core State Standards) and new ELP standards (e.g., ELPA21 standards), particularly between ELP and ELP standards. Thus, the ELP assessments in the Common Core era appeared to put a heavy emphasis on academic language skills embodied in recent academic content standards.…”

Aligning English Language Proficiency Assessments to Standards: Conceptual and Technical Issues

“…In addition to language functions, recent research has attempted to employ a set of categories that constitute language complexity relevant to standards and assessments in U.S. K‐12 education (Bailey, Wolf, & Ballard, 2022; Wolf, Bailey, Ballard, Wang, & Pogossian, 2022). Drawing from previous work, the researchers analyzed standards and assessment materials in terms of (a) linguistic complexity at lexical, syntactic, and discourse levels (Cook & MacDonald, 2013; Hiebert & Pearson, 2014), (b) degree of academic language use from informal/social to discipline‐specific language (Bailey & Heritage, 2019), (c) genre of language tasks and practices (e.g., writing a research report, making a presentation) (Gebhard & Harman, 2011; Wei, Bitterman, Westerlund, & Norton, 2019), (d) complexity of language processing skills (e.g., foundational, basic, and higher‐order skills) (O'Reilly & Sheehan, 2009), (e) integration of language modalities (e.g., listening only, listening and then writing) (Plakans, 2012), and (f) pragmatic arrangements of language use (e.g., types of interlocutors, interaction configurations, multimodal use) (Bailey et al., 2022).…”

“…This framework should be based on L2 acquisition/development theories. As presented earlier, there is recent research to do so based on sociocultural theory and systemic functional linguistics (Bailey et al., 2022; Wolf et al., 2022). Other theories such as communicative competence models (e.g., Bachman & Palmer, 2010; Leung, 2022) and complex adaptive systems (Larsen‐Freeman, 2019) may offer different frameworks to characterize the language demands in ELP standards.…”