Assessment Cultures and Virtual L2 Teaching and Learning

Abstract

The unprecedented emergency remote teaching [Hodges et al., 2020] has created unique challenges, with educators facing higher demands placed on them as they have to assure quality teaching, learning, and assessment under the constraints of time and additional commitments in their professional and personal lives. In this paper, we discuss how existing understandings and conceptualisations, applicable to both online and traditional classrooms, can guide educators in overcoming these challenges and, indeed, in understanding what online modality affords in learner assessment. Conceptually, we will above all, base our paper on the notion of assessment culture, namely assessment of learning and assessment for (AfL) learning cultures [Davison & Leung, 2009], arguing for the benefit of the latter in the classroom. We will also draw upon the notion of higher order and lower order thinking skills [Anderson, Brunfaut, & Harding, 2001], eliciting language functions rather than linguistic, grammatical, and syntactic categories as the object of assessment. We will base our discussion on a number of recently completed and ongoing studies in several L2 (second or foreign language) contexts. We will discuss how assessment cultures and language functions externalising thinking processes can inform educators’ assessment practices, alleviating educators’ concerns for reliability in inferences made from learners’ performance on online assessments and learner engagement.