Join Together: A Nationwide On-Line Community of Practice and Professional Development School Dedicated to Instructional Effectiveness and Academic Excellence within Deaf/Hard of Hearing Education
Objective 2.4 – Assessment
Submitted by:
Topical Team Leaders – John Luckner, Ed.D. and Sandy Bowen, Ph.D.
Topic – Language
Rationale
It will be argued in this paper that classroom teachers of children who are deaf or hard of hearing have primary responsibility for assessing the language of their students. The term “assessment” will be defined as Stewart and Kluwin (2001) defined it, simply, the collection of data in a systematic way. Throughout this paper the words "language" and "English" will be used interchangeably and are equivalent. If a language is being referred to other than English, it will be specified. No attempt will be made in this paper to write a comprehensive treatise on language assessment. The topic is far too broad; indeed a very sizable book would have to be written to do justice to such an undertaking for it would have to incorporate the bodies of information existing in the many books already in print (McDaniel, McKee & Cairns, 1998; Lund, N. & Duchan, 1988; Muma, 1998, 1978). Hopefully, this paper will address the issue of assessment from a very different and unique perspective---from the perspective of teachers.
It is recognized, of course, that not all children with a significant hearing loss experience serious difficulties in learning English, nor are serious language difficulties limited to children who have a profound/severe hearing loss.
The paper is intended to provide:
(a) A purpose for evaluating and teaching English to children who are deaf.
(b) Justification for involving classroom teachers with language assessment.
(c) A conceptual framework for making assessments.
(d) A criteria for making “strong and functional” assessments.
(e) A criteria of selecting assessment tools and strategies, and finally,
(f) Suggestions for making “teacher friendly assessments” within the classroom.
General Guidelines – Hearing Students
The purpose for assessing English competence and developing intervention activities designed to enhance English proficiency should be apparent: English is the dominant language of commerce and being able to function effectively in the world of commerce is essential if a person is to achieve a reasonable amount of economic independence. It is assumed that all people desire economic independence. While it may not be absolutely essential to know and be able to use English to secure economic independence, certainly that aim is greatly facilitated if one knows the language of commerce.
There are several reasons why language assessments should be made; each will be discussed only briefly. While the treatment of each is somewhat abbreviated, there should be no question about the importance and significance of each.
Baselining
Assessments of children’s language are made to determine what they know, and what their skill levels are in a wide variety of domains. Educators typically believe that by finding out “where a child is” (baselining), a foundation is laid for determining “what a teacher should teach”. This process, of course, is often referred to as “diagnostic teaching”, and it seems to be such a universally accepted perspective that no effort will be made to justify it. Indeed, the adage that “If you don’t know where you are, you won’t know how to get where you’re going” captures this perspective. Diagnostic teaching should be the objective of all those who work with language-delayed, or language-disordered children.
Establishing Language Targets (Language Goals)
Once a reasonably clear picture has been developed of those language skills a child has and does not have, then, it is possible to establish language targets. The writing of language targets is not unlike drawing a map: that is, “you have to know where you are" if you want to draw a map to “where it is you want to go". It will be assumed that teachers have the expertise to determine appropriate language targets if they know what abilities their students actually possess. The focus of this paper is upon developing greater skill in unmasking the linguistic abilities of students and quantifying them in a reasonably easy and time-efficient ways.
Increase Effectiveness of Teaching
Assessments are also made to allow teachers to determine if their educational efforts are being successful. Certainly, it would not be possible to determine if a child is making progress in the domain of language as a result of “educational intervention”, if no one assesses the child’s linguistic ability (competence), nor measures the same in objective terms. And, it would be tragic, indeed, if a teacher persisted with an intervention strategy thinking it was efficacious when, in fact, it was not. To be perfectly clear, teachers have the primary responsibility for facilitating language development, and as a consequence, they should take primary responsibility for knowing about the language and language learning curve of each student for whom they are responsible.
Teacher Accountability
Teachers should be accountable for their activities within the classroom. The current climate in education, and the workplace generally, is such that all those employed to provide a service must be accountable for their success, or the lack thereof, as well as their efforts to achieve success. Some teachers may be inclined to recoil from such a notion. The concept of taking assessment to the level of evaluation (making assessment objective through measurement) so that teachers can be held accountable (responsible) is well developed by Stewart and Kluwin (2001) and deserves some serious consideration. This is particularly true in working with children who have a profound hearing loss coupled with serious language problems; linguistic growth comes very slowly.
General Guidelines- Students who are Deaf of Hard of Hearing
In this discussion it is being proposed that the primary responsibility for assessment rest squarely upon the shoulders of the teacher. It is the classroom teacher who has the best opportunity to observe a child’s social behavior, emotional-adjustment style, academic performance, auditory processing capabilities and his/her written, verbal and manual communication skills. It is the teacher who is in the best position to develop working hypotheses about what the child knows and does not know, about what the child can do and cannot do under varying circumstances, and it is the teacher who can best test those hypotheses over and over again in the course of “classroom living”.
It should be made clear in this discussion that assessment within the classroom is not to be viewed as “traditional assessment” where a standardized diagnostic instrument is brought into the classroom and administered to one or more children. Nor should it be thought of as assessment provided by a SLP or diagnostician outside the classroom and shared with a classroom teacher. Rather, it should be the kind of assessment where the teacher, as an astute observer, studies language performance of students, makes insightful observations and draw appropriate conclusions. To do this teachers must be skilled in analyzing the dynamics of the social interactions (social behavior and pragmatic behavior) along with the written-work (journals and daily writings) of their students. Teachers should see themselves as the primary diagnostician, and as such, they should seek the assistance of educational diagnosticians and SLPs to confirm the hypotheses that they have formulated about their students.
One of the most puzzling challenges before teachers is that of knowing where to begin in the assessment process. It is seductively simple and easy to begin the assessment process by selecting some well-recognized, standardized test to administer that assesses grammatical abilities and there are many available (Thompson, et al., 1987). However, such a temptation should be avoided if it is to be used as the primary strategy for assessment. As an alternative, it is suggested that the “place of beginning” should be that of finding answers to four sets of related questions.
Formal Assessment Best Practices- Students who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing
Vocabulary Assessment
For a person to construct a grammatical sentence, they must have vocabulary. The assessment of vocabulary has historically captured much attention and for some remains a domain of fascination. Although the Peabody Vocabulary Test (Dunn and Dunn, 1981) has been used for years with deaf and hard of hearing children standardized norms have never been developed for children with a hearing loss. Two noteworthy attempts have been made to develop a vocabulary test for children with a significant hearing loss, namely, The Total Communication Vocabulary Test (TCVT) (Scherer, 1981) and The Carolina Picture Vocabulary Test (CPVT) (Layton and Holmes, 1985). Of the two, clearly the CPVT has the most comprehensive set of norms. This fact, coupled with the fact that a sign-prompt picture is provided for the examiner, argues strongly that the CPVT is a more usable instrument. However, it is noteworthy that Muma (1998) has argued that the use of any vocabulary test is highly suspect. Additionally, White and Tischler (1999) have pointed out that any vocabulary sign test that does not take into consideration the iconic nature of signs is also of questionable value. Their research on the iconic nature of signs within the CPVT indicates that many of the test items could be answered correctly 100% of the time without any prior contact with, or understanding of "signs". This finding renders the results of formal sign tests highly suspect.
Assessing Syntax-Traditional Approaches
The assessment of syntax has been a high priority since the early 1960’s as a consequence of the insightful work of Chomsky (1957, 1965) that laid the foundation for so much of what has been taken place in the domain of language assessment and language instruction over the past 40+ years. For a comprehensive review of language assessment instruments for deaf and hard of hearing children, the reader is referred to the work of Thompson, M., Piro, P., Vethivelu, S., Pious, C., and Hatfield, N. (1987). Although their conclusions of the value of the various instruments sited are open to question and/or interpretation, their work remains noteworthy.
A variety of instruments have been used for the assessment of syntax with children who are profoundly deaf, but a relatively small number have been standardized on children who are deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH). These notables are listed chronologically below:
1) Maryland Syntax Evaluation Instrument (MSEI) (1975). (White, A. Support Systems for the Deaf, TX )
2) Test of Syntactic Structures (TSA) (1978). (Quigley, S.P., Steinkamp, M.W., Power, D.J., & Jones, B. Dormanc, Inc., PBeaverton, OR.)
3) Grammatical Assessment of Elicited Language (GAEL) (1979). (Mogg, J.S., & Geers, A.E. Central institute for the Deaf, St. Louis, MO).
4) Rhode Island Test of Language Structure (RITLS) (1983). (Engen, E., & Engen, T., Pro Ed, 5341, Austin, TX)
The MSEI is unique in that it can be administered to a group of students, and invites students to write sentences spontaneously to a set of 10 pictures; their written responses can be scored in about 5 to 10 minutes each. Norms exist for residential school deaf students from 6-0 to 18-11. Philosophically, it was developed on the premise that children cannot escape revealing their knowledge of English word order when they write; therefore, the strategy of “awarding points for components in English used properly” will ultimately result in scores that reflect their competence in English. Students cannot guess their way to successful scores. While the test was designed for in-class teacher use, it does require the teacher to be quite knowledgeable about English grammar.
The TSA can also be administered by teachers and given to a group of students. It was normed on older children between the ages of 10-0 and 18-11 years, and relies heavily upon “word scrambles” presented as multiple-choice items. It is comprehensive in nature, and scored objectively, but by virtue of the fact that it is an objective test students are able to guess. Due to the length of the test, accompanied by small print, there is also a heavy “fatigue factor”.
The GAEL has been used much with younger children. It was normed on children 5-0 to 9-0 and relies heavily upon “manipulatives” and personal interaction between child and diagnostician which is a virtue; however, it is seldom given by a teacher because it takes two or more hours to give and longer to score. The assessment is restrictive in that the child’s spontaneous language is ignored and only language that is prompted and imitated can be scored.
The RITLS is teacher friendly in that it is both easy to give and easy to score. However, because it relies upon a format that allows students to point to one of three pictures based upon the target language (the prompt), a child has a 33% chance of guessing the right answer without fully understanding the language prompt. Additionally, a child might have no English competence, but know ASL. If such were the case, it is predicted that a student could still “guess” the right answer based simply upon knowing signs for a few content and structures words. In other words, a child’s semantic knowledge base in ASL might be sufficient to cue him/her to make the proper selection without the English competence which is the thing the test is designed to assess.