Mediation in the Assessment of Language Learning Within an Interlingual and Intercultural Orientation: The Role of Reciprocal Interpretation

Abstract

Over the past two decades, consideration of the nature and role of culture in foreign language learning has gained renewed prominence in the educational work of teachers. The expanded understanding of language learning to include an interlingual and intercultural orientation to language teaching and learning has presented major challenges for assessment on the part of teachers. In this chapter I discuss the collaborative objectives and processes of a three-year collective case study that investigated teacher assessment of student language learning within this orientation. A team of researchers worked with 15 highly experienced teachers of a range of languages in both primary and secondary school settings (i.e., kindergarten through twelfth grade) over the course of 2 year-long assessment cycles. The researchers accompanied the teachers through their work on conceptualising the nature of language learning within an interlingual and intercultural orientation, designing assessment experiences to elicit language learning; gathering classroom learning and assessment data; analysing and judging samples of student work; and evaluating the overall process. Through ongoing facilitated dialogues researchers mediated collaborative, interpretive analyses together with the teachers as a group. These analyses focused on identifying and explaining the emergent characteristics of the teachers’ assessment designs and the group’s evolving understanding of the expanded construct of language learning and specifically the phenomenon of assessment of language learning within an interlingual and intercultural orientation.