This chapter explores how to create valid, fair, and relevant assessments in multilingual teaching contexts. While the “perfect assessment” does not exist, the intention of all assessments should be to make them as fair as possible to all students, providing proof to what degree the desired learning outcomes have been attained, but also serving as an indicator of adjustments or support needed to help students develop as far as they can. In foreign language classrooms, language is usually both a target and a tool. In multilingual contexts among language learners, the language of instruction is undoubtedly a tool to communicate disciplinary content, but only sometimes a target in instruction. This chapter examines the distinction of content concerning language, using syllabi and assessment samples from the social and the natural sciences as well as English as a Foreign Language to compare the language skills needed in different disciplines. Data comes from research conducted in Sweden on teachers’ assessment practices in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and English Medium Instruction (EMI) among newly arrived immigrant students. The chapter presents how to design valid and fair assessments among language learners, taking both students’ needs and the intended learning outcomes (ILOs) into account. Assessment validity theory and an extended version of constructive alignment are used as a theoretical framework. Validity is discussed in relation to the alignment of ILOs, teaching, and assessment, as well as how language and feedback are integrated into course design. For the comparison of syllabi, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and Anderson and Krathwohl’s description of knowledge dimensions and cognitive processes serve as references. The chapter describes how the student’s language proficiency and target language outcome should be considered and integrated into the assessment process before, during, and after the assessment. This is a necessary procedure in subject content courses and foreign language classrooms since it is only possible to learn a language with content to write or talk about or content with the necessary language skills. Content and language are inextricably connected and interdependent, whether it be a matter of individual teachers’ work or cross-disciplinary collaboration.

As diversity is increasing in higher education, the number of students withdisabilities (SWD) grows. In parallel, technological development and onlineeducation change the conditions for teaching and learning. Previous researchindicates that the digitalisation provides both challenges and opportunities forequal participation. This study explores the experiences of SWD in online highereducation, using the Communities of Inquiry model as a theoretical framework.A questionnaire with 6256 students (430 SWD) examines the differences andsimilarities between SWD and other students in online courses. The results showthat SWD are a heterogeneous group with diverse needs and preferences, and thatonline education can offer both advantages and disadvantages for them. The mainadvantages are using technology to compensate for disabilities, enabling moreequal participation, and the flexibility and convenience of online courses. The mainchallenges are difficulties in planning and self-regulation, decreased motivationand increased stress, perceived uncertainties about examination requirementsand proceedings and the unfulfilled need for interactive environments andfeedback. The importance of faculty–student relationships is highlighted, and thesignificance of clarity and accessibility, feedback and interaction and flexibilityand variation in creating inclusive online courses is emphasised. Implications forpolicy and practice are suggested.

Agility analytics is relatively new in learning sciences. It pertains to evidencing actionableand insightful knowledge about a student's ability and capability that may not be readilyunderstood by conventional, traditional assessment exercises. By means ofdisaggregating agility analytics into evolutionary stages: descriptive, diagnostic,predictive, and prescriptive (Morrow 2021), this study aims to uncover dimensions oflearning analytics that differentiate between course development functionality specificto learning outcomes and the utility of alternative assessments to benchmark, track, andscaffold academic achievement. The complexity of agility analytics draws into questionabout whether fundamental changes in how to educate students is examined using casestudy examples of a pilot study using the Personalised Assessment Tool for coursedevelopment in three countries (Australia, China, and Sweden) from 2016-2023. Thisstudy concludes by creating a possible framework for researching agility analytics inuniversity settings, which includes possibilities for both student and staff development.

As linguistic diversity is increasing in many classrooms, teachers across disciplines and educational levels are more often faced with students of different language backgrounds and needs. Concomitant with educational initiatives to develop students’ foreign language skills and multilingual repertoires, urgent needs to fast forward immigrant students’ proficiency in the language of instruction are calling for the attention of educators and policy makers. By comparing and contrasting educational contexts involving content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and mainstream education of newly arrived immigrant students (NAS), this article seeks to bring language policy and its underlying ontology to the fore, highlighting its implications for pedagogy and educational outcomes, as well as for individual students and society. The focus is on the role of language in relation to content, hence a discussion on different variants of language integrated approaches, i.e. CLIL, English medium instruction (EMI) and immersion, to see how the education of immigrants relate to those. The article lends examples from a Swedish comparative research study on teachers’ experiences with language learners in CLIL and among NAS. The contexts differ in some respects, but as this text will argue, the questions of shared character and interest are many, some of which refer to matters of fairness and comparability in education. Teachers in both contexts are struggling with how to handle limitations in students’ academic language skills and students not learning disciplinary content with the same depth and complexity as they might have done if the students had been using their first language, issues which are emphasized in assessment. At the same time as curricula and assessment imply standardized learning outcomes and target language, current discourse advocates translanguaging, leaving many teachers disillusioned as they find incompatibility between students’ flexible use of their linguistic resources and standardized assessment expectations. 

This chapter reports on recent mixed method research investigating the comparability between assessment in relation to linguistic and cultural diversity. It takes as its premise that assessment is an integral part of instruction that becomes a main component for attaining of equal opportunities. Therefore, assessment plays a key role in terms of the wider consequences at both individual and societal levels. One of the central functions of assessment is its measure of quality assurance and comparability for grading to such an extent that it is readily employed to indicate evidence of student achievement of standards and quality. This may sometimes present issues in terms of learner diversity. We focus on the challenges facing teaching in linguistically diverse learning settings in which a foreign language may be used as an alternative to instruction. Here we draw on a recent study from two separate multilingual learning contexts in Sweden. We shed light on the generic questions arising from such disjuncture in these linguistically diverse educational sites as evidence on a call for much needed scholarly attention on the quality aspect in assessment.

This thesis presents the results from two research projects on teachers’ assessment beliefs and practices in multilingual education. Study I involved teachers of biology, history or English as a foreign language (EFL) in Swedish upper secondary Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) schools, grades 10-12, where English is used as the medium of instruction. In Study II teachers from schools with newly-arrived migrant students (NAS) grades 7 to 12 in the natural and social sciences participated. In both contexts, students are learning the language of instruction at the same time as they are expected to develop subject area knowledge why issues in relation to the role of language in assessment come to the fore. The aim is to contribute to the knowledge of an underexplored research area on subject matter assessment in multilingual schools and draw attention to the consequences varying language policies and pedagogies may have on fairness in access opportunities and validity in assessment outcomes.

In this thesis teachers’ language beliefs and practices as expressed in interviews, questionnaires and assessment samples were compared and analyzed in relation to the cognitive and linguistic requirements of language functions in syllabi and the assessment tasks. Whereas Study I was mainly qualitative in nature, involving 12 teachers, a mixed method approach was adopted in Study II where 196 teachers participated in a survey and 13 in follow-up interviews. The responses in the survey were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Thematic content analysis was used for the interview data, the assessment samples and open-ended survey questions.

The findings from the two studies indicate that although teachers state that language is not part of the assessment, they maintain that students need to use language to show proof of critical thinking and more advanced analytical skills. All teachers regardless of discipline shared the weight attached to covering course content as expressed in syllabi which points at a shared accountability culture. One of the main concerns expressed by the teachers is how to construct assignments where language does not represent a hindrance to show content knowledge. Teachers in both studies claimed to focus mainly on subject concepts, not general academic language, and the assessment beliefs and practices seemed to be closely related to the character of the subject. The non-parametric tests of association revealed that teachers with a dual language and subject content certification displayed significantly higher results in relation to all activities involving a visible language pedagogy, e.g. looking at useful sentence structures and providing model texts. Oral follow-up was used by all teachers to remedy poor written results. Although the use of the students’ strongest language is advocated in guidelines for the instruction of NAS, most teachers in Study II referred to a monolingual Swedish language norm. 

In a society where the educational discourse has become characterized by diversity, inequality and segregation, these two studies underline the need for a shared language policy and pedagogy across subjects and school contexts. They also suggest that an organization and teacher profession with an explicit responsibility for academic language is needed to provide equal access to subject content and validity and comparability in assessment in multilingual schools.