차별기능문항분석을 통해 살펴본 초등학교 다문화가정 학생의 영어 학업성취 특성

This study investigates sources of English performance characteristics of multi-cultural background elementary students, compared with general students. By employing differential item functioning procedures, this study explores academic difficulties that the students from multi-cultural families are undergoing. Results of this study showed that there are problems caused from training, linguistic issues, and cultural elements. First, performance differences can occur directly as a result of lack of training or experience in short answer items. Second, multi-cultural background elementary students fail to choose the correct answers as they do not understand the meaning of item stems in Korean properly. Third, students from multi-cultural families are unfamiliar with item contents such as baseball bat and gloves, which are ordinary materials for general students. As multi-cultural background students are unfamiliar with Korean language and Korean culture, they lack cognitive capability in understanding the English section of the National Assessment of Educational Achievement (NAEA) items. Learning English could be a huge pressure for students from multi-cultural families when English becomes the third language to acquire. Timely support in teaching and learning aspects and further details on students from multi-cultural families need to be investigated. The appropriate action is to work with the children in developing their language skills, not to remove items from the NAEA.