ABSTRACT

The population of young language minority (LM) students is rapidly growing worldwide due to global migration and immigration trends. The increasing representation of young LM students in school settings creates high demand for the language assessment of LM students in order to meet the needs of stakeholders, such as governments and language programs. This special issue thus focuses on the validity considerations for assessing young LM students, defined as school-age children and adolescents between the ages of 5 to 15 who speak alanguage at home that is different from the majority/societal language or the primary language of schooling. We conceptualize validity following the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, and we focus on assessments for young LM students who have not been discussed sufficiently in the previous studies: LM children who learn an additional language other than English (Study 1 by Butler & Sakurai, acase of Japanese); indigenous learners of so-called standard English in Australia (Study 2 by Hudson & Angelo), multilingual children in Norway (Study 3 by Flognfeldt, Tsagari, Šurkalović, & Tishakov), and bilingual children with language disorder in the United States (Study 4 by Peña, Bedore, Lugo-Neris, & Albudoor). The four empirical studies examined different dimensions of validity considerations and the unique challenges for assessing young LM students. They represent multi-disciplinary perspectives and avariety of methodological orientations and techniques. They also provide rich representations of validity considerations in language assessments in different regions of the world as well as majority-minority language combinations. The special issue not only informs test validity theories but has practical implications for promoting educational opportunities and equity for young LM students in various parts of the world.

摘要

由于全球移民和移民趋势，全球青年语言（LM）学生的数量正在迅速增长。LM青年学生在学校中的代表人数不断增加，因此对LM学员的语言评估提出了很高的要求，以满足政府和语言课程等利益相关者的需求。因此，本期专刊侧重于评估年轻的LM学生的有效性，这些学生被定义为5至15岁的学龄儿童和青少年，他们在家中使用的语言不同于多数/社会语言或主要学习语言。我们根据教育和心理测试标准将有效性概念化，我们的重点是对以前学习中未充分讨论的年轻LM学生的评估：学习除英语以外的其他语言的LM儿童（Butler＆Sakurai的研究1，日语）；在澳大利亚，所谓的标准英语的土著学习者（哈德森和安吉洛的研究2），在挪威的多语种儿童（Flognfeldt，Tsagari，Šurkalović和Tishakov的研究3）以及美国的语言障碍双语儿童（研究4）由Peña，Bedore，Lugo-Neris和Albudoor撰写）。四个实证研究考察了有效性考虑因素的不同维度以及评估年轻LM学生的独特挑战。它们代表了多学科的观点以及方法论方向和技术的多样性。它们还在世界不同地区的语言评估以及多数少数民族语言组合中提供了对有效性考虑因素的丰富表示。该特刊不仅为测试有效性理论提供了信息，而且对促进世界各地年轻的LM学生的教育机会和公平性具有实际意义。