“Righting Assessment: Literacy Assessment and Instruction – Two Sides of the Same Coin”
Dr. Jim Cummins, Professor Emeritus, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto
Check out our podcast episode and accompanying sketchnote where we welcome Dr. Jim Cummins to discuss liberating assessment. For further reading read/view Dr. Cummins’ articles, the slides from his presentation .
About Dr. Jim Cummins
From a human rights perspective, Cummins’ presentation “Righting Assessment: Literacy Assessment and Instruction—Two Sides of the Same Coin” will address issues with monolingual and one-size-fits-all approaches to literacy education and assessment. Drawing on his recent book Rethinking the Education of Multilingual Learners: A Critical Analysis of Theoretical Concepts (2021), Cummins will speak to the research on curriculum and assessment approaches that recognize the cultural and linguistic diversities of learners and their funds of knowledge. Accurate assessment of students’ literacy progress and developmental trajectories, then, must take account of the extent to which students have had opportunities to learn the skills and content being assessed. This happens through assessment practices that 1) engage students’ multilingual repertoires; 2) connect with students’ lives and the knowledge, culture, and language of their communities; and 3) change the power dynamics within the classroom to affirm students’ identities, enabling them to use their multilingual competencies to carry out powerful intellectual and creative academic work.
Dr. Jim Cummins is a Professor Emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. Cummins’s research focuses on literacy development in educational contexts characterized by linguistic diversity. He explores the nature of language proficiency and its relationship to literacy development with particular emphasis on the intersections of societal power relations, teacher-student identity negotiation, and literacy attainment. His research on multilingualism has informed curriculum and policy across Canada. Cummins responded to the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s (OHRC) The Right to Read report (2022), speaking to the need to consider the impact of literacy socialization as a prerequisite for effective reading instruction in the early years of schooling.
undoing, decolonizing, liberating, righting and reassembling literacies assessment 