Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education (review)

I recently argued that a fuller, systematic understanding of ordinary classroom assessment practices is among the most pressing issues for future research on second and foreign language education (Cumming, 2004). So when I was asked to review this book, I was intrigued by its title and curious to know what its contents would hold. I was surprised in two ways, both of which I think are instructive.

First, most of the articles in this book are not primarily about assessment practices, as the book's title had initially led me to expect. Most of the articles are primarily about policies. What is instructive is how these analyses of policies and their implications are in fact integral to understanding or doing ordinary classroom assessment practices in foreign language teaching. As many of the authors argue (with varying degrees of explicitness), understanding specific policies that relate to language education is vital for educators to know how to guide their assessment practices to fulfill or accommodate the policies. Indeed, as I read through the book, I started to wonder whether the current state of language education is such that ordinary classroom assessment practices might only be understood or organized in relation to policies at a national, state, and institutional level. This concept features prominently in a handbook on educational policies that I recently edited with colleagues (Bascia, Cumming, Datnow, Leithwood, & Livingstone, in press), and it appears to be increasingly true of literacy education internationally, as implementing accountability measures, reporting on the achievement of standards, and evaluating program innovations have become fundamental, routine elements of educational work worldwide.

Editors Cherry and Bradley introduce the book's contents by describing three policies featured throughout it: accreditation of teacher education programs, teacher evaluation, and licensure of teachers. These policies vary locally, by state or school district. These complexities are in themselves instructive, particularly in knowing that such policies need not be implemented in any singular way. But the policy that dominates most of the book, and indeed most recent discussions of education in the US, is the national No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which Lynne McClendon's chapter analyzes in reference to its concept of 'highly qualified teacher' and its implications for foreign language instruction, curricula, and teacher education. Rosalie Cheatham's chapter offers an informative account of the revision of one university's teacher education program to meet the US National Standards in Foreign Language Education and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages' Program Standards for the Preparation of Foreign Language Teachers. Denise Egea-Kuehne's chapter, in turn, documents how teachers can use electronic portfolios to evaluate students' progress over a language course in order to fulfill accountability requirements. The chapter that interested me most was Wilkerson, Schomber, and Sandarg's analysis of the content requirements of the Praxis II test for the licensure of teachers of French, German, and Spanish, which highlights the variable expectations that agencies have for its results. Sharron Abernethy's chapter documents a unique university program that combines foreign language learning, inter-cultural communications, and studies in international trade. Three other chapters describe particular approaches to assessment in respect to standards for listening comprehension and oral proficiency interviews.

The second surprise was that this book is the product of a regional conference sponsored by the Southern Conference on Language Teaching, and so exclusively addresses local interests - in this instance, those of foreign language educators in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South and North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. What is there for Canadian educators to learn from a collection of papers aimed at teachers and educational administrators in these southern US states? The relevance is not direct, as it might be with chapters in McGarrell and Courchene's (2004) comparable, Ontario-based collection of articles for teachers of adult English as a second language in regards to assessment practices with the Canadian Language Benchmarks. But I believe...