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Improving Meaningful Use of Accommodations by Multilingual Learners
Author(s) -
Shafer Willner Lynn,
Mokhtari Kouider
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the reading teacher
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.642
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1936-2714
pISSN - 0034-0561
DOI - 10.1002/trtr.1637
Subject(s) - summative assessment , reading (process) , psychology , test (biology) , accommodation , mathematics education , professional development , pedagogy , computer science , formative assessment , linguistics , paleontology , philosophy , neuroscience , biology
For more than two decades, accommodations have served as the primary strategy for ensuring the valid participation of multilingual learners ( MLL s) in high‐stakes summative assessments. Using historical analyses of the evolution of testing accommodation guidelines and related instructional practices, the authors explain how the application of accessibility principles to test development and testing guidelines has reframed accommodations into three categories: accommodations, accessibility features, and administration considerations. The authors then discuss what educators can do to more effectively prepare MLL s by integrating these supports into instruction that targets strategic reading and engagement with text and illustrate how the transfer of paper‐oriented reading strategies to digital texts requires explicit attention to foster effective use of embedded accommodations and accessibility features. The authors also provide sample professional development activities to build educator awareness about ideas for integrating MLL test preparations around accommodations into close reading instruction of digital texts.