Mapping the roots of assessment for SLCN

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Mapping the roots of assessment for SLCN
theory informing practice

• Deirdre Martin
• School of Education, University of Birmingham
• d.m.martin_at_bham.ac.uk

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2 roots theory and methodology
Assessment a Tree analogy
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Contents

• 1. Policy contexts for assessment of SLCN
• 2. Concept formation and theory-making
• 3. Metaphors of language learning theories
• 4. Methodologies
• 5. Conceptual confusions and conflations
• 6. Ways forward Conclusions

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Common Assessment Framework

• Development of the child
• Parents and Carers perspectives
• Family and Environmental information

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CAF provides an assessment that is common
across services. It will help embed a shared
language support better understanding amongst
practitioners reduce the number of different
assessments facilitate early intervention and
speed up service delivery. (CAF 2006)
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• There are a range of existing specialist
  assessments that are used in particular agencies,
  by particular professionals and have a fairly
  specific focus. They tend to focus more and go
  into some depth on the key issues covered by the
  agency. Specialist assessments are often used to
  help decision-making about whether or not a
  child/young person meets threshold criteria to
  trigger delivery of a service.
• (CAF 2006).

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2. Concept formation and theory-making

• Everyday lived experiences, theories,
• metaphors and methodologies

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Scientific and spontaneous concepts
Concept
Scientific concepts

• Impose on child logically defined concepts
• Scientific concepts move downwards towards
  greater concreteness
• Evolve in highly structured and specialized
  activity of classroom instruction

Mature concepts
Spontaneous Concepts

• Concepts emerge from the childs own
• reflections of everyday experience
• Spontaneous concepts move upwards towards
  greater abstractness
• Develops in childs everyday learningenvironment

Object
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should of

• should have

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• Theories, metaphors and methodologies are
  important cognitive devices to support human
  thinking as well as providing shared conceptual
  tools to support collective thinking (Mercer
  2000173).

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3. Metaphors

• Metaphors are used as tools for conceptual
  development by describing a subject in terms of
  another subject, so that our understanding is
  enhanced. Characteristics of the first subject
  are transposed to the second often a concrete
  object or experience is used to relate to
  something abstract or conceptual. While
  conceptual understanding is enhanced in one way
  it is also limited by the concrete dimensions and
  orientations of the metaphor.

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bucket theory (Crystal 1987)

• metaphor representing the mind-as-container
• assessment of language competencies can be
  measured in much the same way as one would
  measure liquid in a container (Kovarsky et al.,
  199918).
• metaphor of mind-as-filing-cabinet represents
  speech and language knowledge in terms of the
  language information processing model with
  hierarchic levels and input. (Middleton and Brown
  2005).

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Metaphors of language learning

• Acquisition
• Participation
• Co-construction

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Acquisition metaphor

• Represents several allied theories
• Language learning is driven by maturation
• Social world is fenced out
• Development is towards ideal target forms of
  language
• Difficulties attributed to bio/cognitive factors

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Acquisition metaphor

• Structural linguistics /cognitive psychology/
• computer metaphor represents language information
  processing
• Input/output of language
• Storing, retrieving and manipulating language
  knowledge and information
• Difficulties attributed to disturbed programming
  (e.g. CAS)

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Critiques of Acquisition metaphor

• Learning is an event across-the-board phenomena
• Limited application for understanding
  intervention
• Cant represent language shaped by social
• semantics, pragmatics, bilingualism

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Participation metaphor
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Participation metaphor

• Assessment
• communication in a variety of differing contexts
  and environments
• communication expectations of adults
• communication in learning contexts
• (Wyatt,1999 199)

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Context is

• for structural linguistics
• the phonological / grammatical environment
• Pictures elicit items to be named, giving
  consonant phonemes and clusters in all positions
  with most in more than one context. (Edinburgh
  Articulation Test),

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• An ecological perspective on language assessment
  facilitates real language study.
• Pragmatics refers to the study of the use of
  language in context, by real speakers and hearers
  in real situations
• (Bates, 1974).

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Context is

• that which surrounds (Cole 1996)
• situated meaning
• The coffees spilled.

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Context is

• a relational phenomenon in which the text
  -what is going on- cannot be separated from the
  con what accompanies it. The texture of an
  event changes moment by moment as the elements
  which constitute it co-emerge identities,
  relationships, actions, semiotic resources, the
  significance and use of space and time, all of
  which have historical trajectories, are networked
  to others, and are culturally shaped. (Ivanic,
  2006 8)

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Context is

• constructed through actions and practice
• socialisation practices and traditions of
  families, schools and communities (Ochs 1988)
• Language and language learning is always situated
  practice and context dependent (Lave and Wenger
  1991, Lantolf 2000)

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Practitioners knowledge and beliefs
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Participation

• Potential for language learning lies in the
  interplay between the external and the internal
  (Spolsky 1989)
• (1) Motivation to engage with language(s) that is
  encouraged through teaching/learning
• (2) Opportunity to be exposed to and engage with
  language(s), particularly that of schooling.
• (3) Knowledge about (all) language(s) known to
  the learner
• (4) Ability of the learner to learn and develop
  language.

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Co-construction
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Co-construction

• Key concepts
• Affordance
• Mediation
• ZPD
• It focuses on the moment when learners
• interact with unfamiliar material in social and
• cultural settings and they become
• person-plus (Perkins, 1993)

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Co-construction

• Dynamic assessment
• . . . it includes deliberate and planned
  mediational teaching and the assessment of the
  effects of that teaching on subsequent
  performance (Hayward Tzuriel, 2002 40).

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4. Methodologies

• Theories and methodologies are 2 sides of the
  same coin
• Etic (outsider) perspectives
• theories in the acquisition metaphor
• Emic (insider) perspectives
• theories in the participation metaphor
• and co-construction metaphor

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Etic (outsider) perspectives

• theories are represented by the acquisition
  metaphor
• measurable product of language learning
• features of the individual are treated as fixed
  phenomena
• data highly controlled by researcher

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Emic (insider) perspectives

• Theories are represented by participation and
  co-construction
• Individual features are socially constructed
• Natural, real language samples
• Story re-telling Parental reports
• Legitimacy, reliability, reflexion resources

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Methodologies for assessing language learning

• CAF Progress causing concern
• Etic Test teach test again
• Emic observation of learning context

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5. Conceptual confusions/conflations

• Measurability
• Physical attributes are measurable
• irreducible uncertainty of inner language
• (Wittgenstein)
• Measure product and performance

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Dualisms

• Neuroimaging of the brain
• The brain physical attribute, is a tool
• The mind formed socially, has agency
• Learning causes brain changes (Goswami 2004)

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Narrow concept

• Testing learnt vocabulary BPVS
• referencing knowledge
• but not packaging
• or networking

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Compromises

• Policy demands
• Lack of resources time, knowledge

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• We predict that this pragmatics approach will
  not be just another addition to our evaluation
  techniques but that it will shake the very
  foundations of how we have been approaching
  children with language problems. Our notion that
  we can examine childrens language by presenting
  them with controlled stimuli, such as sentences
  to imitate or formal tests, will come into
  question. Our idea that language in the clinic is
  the same as language outside the clinic will be
  suspect. Our hope that we can measure a childs
  language ability in one context in a two-hour
  diagnostic session will be demolished as results
  from the research in pragmatics become known to
  us. (Lund and Duchan (1983 p.6)

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Conceptual conflation

• Questioning age-stage development
• The universals fallacy argument
• In a sample of 128 children developing
  normally the difference between the least and the
  most advanced at 42 months (36) was the
  equivalent of between 30 and 36 months. A closer
  look at the figures (Wells 1985, p123) suggests
  that the least advanced performed at the level of
  the average child between 24 30 months, while
  the most advanced was beyond the level of the
  average five-year-old. (Richards 1994)

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Conceptual conflation

• Emic changing to Etic
• Increasing researcher/assessor control
• narratives gtelicited story telling
• natural language sampling -gt
• elicited expressive grammar
• Dynamic assessment -gt
• prescriptive, controlled testing (Valdes and
  Figueroa 1994).

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6. Future orientations
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Learning in and for Interagency Working
Networking
Co-configuration
Modularisation
Mass Customisation
Architectural knowledge
Process Enhancement
Linking
Practical knowledge
Development
Mass Production
Articulated knowledge
Craft
Tacit Knowledge
Renewal
Historical forms of work (adapted from Victor
Boynton, 1998)
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Conclusions

• Implications of the CAF policy context
• Consciousness of heritage of theories and
  methodologies of assessments for SLCN
• Be prepared for new research and new learning to
  happen