Democratic Validation of the Steps to English Proficiency Assessment Framework

Current assessment culture reflects a turn to assessment ‘for’ and ‘as’ learning. This turn promotes authentic assessment in a specific language-in-use context, such as classrooms (Brindley, 2001; Chalhoub-Deville, 2003; Shepard, 2002). Over the past two decades, the field of language assessment has focused attention on developing and validating descriptors-based English proficiency scales for assessment. Descriptors-based English proficiency scales are often used in the contexts of 3P assessments: performance, product, and portfolio. Descriptor scales are used in making inferences about students’ underlying language abilities based on observable linguistic behaviors gathered from students’ performance, products, or portfolios. This new approach to assessment presents unique challenges to warranting validity claims and psychometric quality, partly because of different philosophical grounds underlying the two approaches to assessment culture (Brindley, 2001; Gipps, 1994; North, 1995; North & Schneider, 1998). In this paper, we discuss democratic evaluation as an alternative approach which engages multiple stakeholders in validating language proficiency descriptors-based scales for classroom assessment and stimulating policy change. Based on the longitudinal, multi-round evaluation processes of newly developed language proficiency scales (Steps to English Proficiency), we examine two key principles of democratic evaluation: inclusion and deliberation. Through the examination of the interplay among the principles, we highlight needs for engaging in continued, committed, and critical dialogue and deliberation, and inclusion of voices from those are distant from and near to power.