2-2. CLIL Assessment — Transcript

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1. 0:02I’m Yuen Yi Lo from the Faculty of Education,  the University of Hong Kong. In this video,
2. 0:08I’m going to talk about assessment issues in  Content and Language Integrated Learning, CLIL.
3. 0:18Existing research on CLIL has focused  more on students learning outcomes
4. 0:23and classroom interaction processes. It  is noticed that assessment has so far been
5. 0:29something of a blind spot in many CLIL programs  and research, but why is assessment important
6. 0:35and worth examining? First, we are all familiar  with the potential Backwash effect of assessment,
7. 0:44which means that assessment will affect teaching  and learning behaviors. Hence, it is important to
8. 0:51examine the nature of CLIL assessment and see  the implications for teaching and learning.
9. 0:58Second, how students are assessed directly affects  the evaluation of students’ learning outcomes
10. 1:05in CLIL programs. In other words, if we don't  critically examine the assessment in CLIL, how
11. 1:13do we know that we are evaluating students  learning outcomes accurately and conducting
12. 1:18fair comparison between CLIL and non-CLIL  students? This is especially important in context
13. 1:26where CLIL students are compared with non-CLIL  counterparts in high-stakes public examination.
14. 1:39Now, let's turn to the importance of assessment  in the teaching and learning process.
15. 1:46We usually start with the curriculum  goals and learning objectives
16. 1:50which refer to what we want our students  to learn. Based on the stated learning
17. 1:56objectives, teachers design instructional  activities that will help students learn,
18. 2:04then assessment allows teachers to know whether  students have achieved the learning objectives.
19. 2:11The assessment data then reflects  students’ strengths and weaknesses
20. 2:16which in turn inform the next teaching and  learning cycle. The diagram here underscores
21. 2:23the importance of aligning the three components  to promote effective teaching and learning.
22. 2:33When the alignment of objectives, instruction  and assessment is applied to CLIL, it becomes a
23. 2:39bit more complicated. For the learning objectives,  teachers need to pay attention to both content and
24. 2:47language learning objectives. For instruction,  teachers need to integrate or counter balance
25. 2:54to let content and language teaching, so as  to help students to achieve the dual goal.
26. 3:01When assessing students, teachers also  need to pay attention to the content,
27. 3:06cognitive and language dimensions, but  many teachers may not be aware of these.
28. 3:17These are some issues associated with assessment  in CLIL. First, do we assess language or content
29. 3:25first? Second, do we sometimes assess one and  not the other? if so, which one do we assess,
30. 3:33and when, why and how? Third, when do  we assess? And then, how do we assess?
31. 3:44Let's try to explore these questions.  Regarding the what question,
32. 3:49we should assess what we set as the learning  objectives, so that the assessment is valid.
33. 3:56Therefore, if CLIL pays attention to both content  and language objectives, both should be assessed.
34. 4:05In many CLIL programs, teachers pay more  attention to content knowledge, but we would
35. 4:11like to emphasize that the language demands  involved in assessment should not be ignored.
36. 4:17I will come back to this point later.
37. 4:21In terms of content, teachers should assess  students content knowledge and cognitive skills,
38. 4:28for example, where the students can record  the knowledge, apply what they have learned
39. 4:33and demonstrate high order thinking  skills, such as analyzing and evaluating.
40. 4:41Regarding assessment of language, teachers  need to be aware of the language demands
41. 4:46that assessment questions impose on students,
42. 4:51for example, when attempting assessment, students  usually need to read and understand the questions
43. 4:58which involve receptive language skills. At the  same time, students are expected to demonstrate
44. 5:05their content knowledge through sentences, words  or text. These involve productive language skills.
45. 5:14In CLIL, content subject teachers tend to focus  more on content knowledge and cognitive skills
46. 5:21involved in assessment, but they should also  be aware of the language demands involved.
47. 5:33Regarding when to assess, teachers may focus  more on summative assessments, which are usually
48. 5:40conducted at the end of a unit, topic, term  or academic year. However, to have continuous
49. 5:49assessment and provide immediate feedback for  students, teachers also need to pay more attention
50. 5:55to the quest to formative assessment, including  questioning in lessons and also homework.
51. 6:02There are also different forms  or different ways of assessment.
52. 6:06I have just mentioned formative  assessment and summative assessment.
53. 6:11Meanwhile, teachers can also think about whether  students are assessed individually or in groups,
54. 6:18in oral or in written form. We encourage  teachers to employ different forms of assessment
55. 6:26which can better cater for students’  diverse needs and different learning
56. 6:30styles. When teachers are assessing students,  they are actually challenging them. Here, I
57. 6:40would like to illustrate the relationship between  challenge and support, and their implications.
58. 6:47In most cases, teachers are giving  high challenges to students.
59. 6:52If teachers do not provide sufficient support,  students have limited chance to success,
60. 6:59and they will be frustrated. On the other hand,  if teachers provide sufficient scaffolding,
61. 7:06student learning occurs in the zone of proximal  development, that should be what teachers aim at.
62. 7:15In CLIL programs, students  are learning content knowledge
63. 7:19and language at the same time, and  hence they are facing high challenges.
64. 7:25Teacher support is then very important  to ensure that learning takes place.
65. 7:36But how can teachers know the demands  they are imposing on students,
66. 7:40so that they know how to provide  support? To address this question,
67. 7:46I would like to share three frameworks for  designing and analyzing CLIL assessment.
68. 7:56The first one is proposed by Short, who examined  the English language learners in the US.
69. 8:02Actually, there's been rather extensive  research on how to accommodate the needs
70. 8:08of English language learners in assessment, so  that they can be assessed in a more valid way.
71. 8:15This figure is a matrix of WHAT and HOW.
72. 8:21The WHAT dimension highlights the focus of  assessment, for example, whether it's on
73. 8:27content knowledge, skills or language. The HOW  dimension focuses on the format of assessment,
74. 8:36instead of having written assessment all the time,
75. 8:39we can consider other formats such as  portfolios, oral reports, videos etc.,
76. 8:47so that students with lower English proficiency  can still demonstrate their content knowledge
77. 8:52in some formats. I think this matrix is useful for  reminding teachers of different ways of assessing
78. 9:00students. This is especially useful for formative  assessment and school-based assessment. However,
79. 9:08in context where the high-stakes examination is  still dominated by written assessment. We may
80. 9:15need to refer to other frameworks which focus on  the combination of content and language skills.
81. 9:27So this framework developed  by CLIL researchers in Europe,
82. 9:31highlights the integration of content knowledge,  cognitive thinking skills and also L2 competence.
83. 9:39I think this framework is useful for teachers  to be aware of what they are assessing students
84. 9:45and what may be the demands imposed on students,  but this framework looks a bit descriptive.
85. 9:55The last framework from our research  team is similar to the second framework,
86. 10:00and it is developed based on the  English medium education in Hong Kong.
87. 10:07This framework combines different aspects of  skills: language and cognitive. To make it more
88. 10:14generic, we focus on the general on the generic  cognitive demands and linguistic demands, and we
89. 10:21divide them into three different levels. Along the  cognitive dimensions, we condense the six levels
90. 10:29of the Bloom's taxonomy to three levels, capturing  the low, medium and high order thinking skills.
91. 10:37On the linguistic dimension, we also  have three levels in general: vocabulary,
92. 10:43sentence patterns and text. And for each level, we  can also consider receptive or productive skills.
93. 10:51We believe this framework can generate more  fine-grained analysis of assessment questions.
94. 10:58In a recent study, we have further revised  this framework which is more complicated.
95. 11:05You may refer to Lo and Fung 2018 for more  details, but for the time being, this three
96. 11:12by three matrix would help teachers understand the  different demands of assessment questions in CLIL.
97. 11:21Let me further illustrate the  framework with some examples.
98. 11:25With our framework, each question can be coded  according to the cognitive and linguistic demand,
99. 11:32for example, this is a typical diagram  labeling question in science. Students
100. 11:39need to read the sentence or instruction in  the question, and then they need to write
101. 11:45down the names of different parts. So we will  quote this question as productive vocabulary
102. 11:52and cognitive recall, as students are expected  to recall the location of different organs.
103. 11:59This is a multiple choice question, typically  students need to read the question and choices
104. 12:07which are often written in sentences. So the  linguistic demand is at the sentence level.
105. 12:14For this particular question, it  asks students to recall the functions
106. 12:19of mineral phosphorus for the human body,  so it requires low level thinking skills.
107. 12:29This is a structural or short question.  It usually asks the question in sentences
108. 12:35and students are also expect to  express their answers in sentences.
109. 12:42In this question, the students are asked to apply  Newton's first law of motion to as new scenario,
110. 12:50so the cognitive skills required  is at the application level.
111. 12:57In this last example, students are required  to design an experiment to test the amount
112. 13:03of vitamin C in different objects. They are asked  to carry out the experiment and write the report
113. 13:10and observations. In this case,  students are expected to produce a text,
114. 13:17that is lab report, and to demonstrate  high order thinking skills.
115. 13:26With such a framework, we could analyze  the cognitive and linguistic demands of
116. 13:32assessment in of questions in assessment, and  how these different levels are distributed.
117. 13:39This is important. If we want to better  diagnose our students learning progress,
118. 13:44including their strengths and weaknesses, we may  need to include questions at different cognitive
119. 13:51and linguistic levels, so that students with  lower English proficiency can still express
120. 13:57their content knowledge in some questions. If  all the questions target at high cognitive, high
121. 14:04level of cognitive and linguistic skills, when  students cannot answer the questions, we won't be
122. 14:10able to know whether the students do not know the  content or they have language barriers. That's why
123. 14:19we believe that this framework could help teachers  to design assessment tasks with enhanced validity.
124. 14:29In one of our projects, we analyzed the assessment  questions in textbooks and public examination at
125. 14:36different grade levels in English medium education  in Hong Kong. We coded the questions with our
126. 14:42framework and we observe that the cognitive and  linguistic demands increase significantly from
127. 14:49junior to senior forms, especially when  students sit for the public examination.
128. 14:56This has important implications for  pedagogy. If teachers understand the
129. 15:01demands imposed on students in assessment,  they can prepare students for the assessment,
130. 15:08for example, in another study we  conducted in EMI schools in Hong Kong.
131. 15:13We observed that some teachers are more  aware of the language demands in assessment,
132. 15:19and in the lessons, they provided explicit  guidance and instruction for students regarding
133. 15:25how to answer a particular type of question  in assessment. Student sample work collected
134. 15:31showed that such scaffolding did  help students perform in assessment.
135. 15:38In this video, I have highlighted some issues  related to assessment in CLIL. I hope teachers
136. 15:45can pay more attention to the issues, so that  students can be assessed in a valid and fair way.
137. 15:52These are some key references if you  would like to know more about the topic.