From Testing to Teaching: Equity for Multilingual Learners in International Schools

Background/Context: The landscape of English-medium independent schools today is increasingly multilingual, challenging traditional monolingual norms of English testing and teaching. Multilingual learners—students who are able to navigate school in more than one language—are more vulnerable to the negative impacts of standardized tests in English because in many schools, these assessments are used solely to determine students’ proficiency for placement, labeling, or tracking purposes. International schools provide a useful context in which to investigate the intersection of language and equity. As independent institutions situated in complex transnational and postcolonial linguistic ecosystems, international schools determine their own local policies and programs for English language assessment and support. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This article is about the relationship between testing and teaching, and how educators describe this relationship within a particular network of international schools. Examining the relationship between English language assessment and instruction for multilingual learners helps to describe pathways toward more inclusive schools. Inquiring into how schools can build on the assets of multilingual learners requires rethinking the monolingual norm of English as an exclusive path for learning and a marker of privilege. Additionally, studying a global network of schools illustrates how resources that were developed in the United States can be used more globally: at the classroom level, within a whole-school context, and across a transnational educational consortium. Research Design: I use a mixed-methods analysis to investigate how educators describe programs that serve multilingual learners. I analyze school-based narratives written by educators across a global consortium of 500 international schools to inquire into the relationship between testing and teaching. Findings/Results: Within this particular global network, I found that educators describe links between English language assessments and other program components: an asset-based approach, professional learning, and school-wide systems to serve multilingual learners. I explain how a systemic approach to connecting assessments and instruction can contribute to more equitable schools for multilingual learners. Additionally, by comparing schools that recently joined the network and schools that had been members for three or more years, I identified a developmental trajectory, moving from a primary focus on English language assessments to increased collaborative practices for serving a multilingual school community. Conclusions/Recommendations: This initial research has important implications for independent schools and educators of multilingual learners. Understanding how the global and the local integrate illustrates how schools can adapt rather than adopt new assessments and instructional resources: both changing and being changed by new tools. By describing the impact of an English language assessment tool and an associated community of practice on school-wide systems to better serve multilingual learners, this study has the potential to inform future school improvement efforts. Although critical questions remain about the role of multilingualism in independent schools, this study provides a lens through which to understand the movement of ideas and practices across diverse spaces.