Introduction
Numerous references to ‘new’ literacies have been added to the discourse of various academic and public domains, resulting in a multiplication of literacies. Among them is the term ‘language assessment literacy’ (LAL), which has been used as a subset of Assessment Literacy (AL) (Gan & Lam, Reference Gan and Lam2022) in the field of language testing and assessment and has not been uncontested. LAL refers to the skills, knowledge, methods, techniques and principles needed by various stakeholders in language assessment to design and carry out effective assessment tasks and to make informed decisions based on assessment data (e.g., Fulcher, 2012Footnote *; Inbar-Lourie, 2008*[1]; Reference Inbar-Lourie2013; Taylor, 2009*, 2013*).
The concept of LAL was developed from discussions on AL in educational assessment in the early 1990s (AFT, NCME, & NEA, 1990). Stiggins (Reference Stiggins1991), who coined the term ‘assessment literacy’, argued that assessment literate stakeholders would have to know what characterizes high-quality assessment and be able to apply that knowledge to different measures of student achievement. He also held that the scope of AL research and training needed to be broadened from standardized testing to classroom assessment.
This view was echoed by Brindley (Reference Brindley, Elder, Brown, Hill, Iwashita, Lumley, McNamara and O'Loughlin2001*), who paved the way for the development of AL in language education. He conceptualized teacher LAL as consisting of knowledge and skills relating to the following five components: (i) the social context of assessment; (ii) defining and describing proficiency; (iii) constructing and evaluating language tests; (iv) the role of assessment in the language curriculum; and (v) how to put assessment into practice. The idea that LAL comprised knowledge and skills components was supported in later publications by, for example, Davies (2008*) and Inbar-Lourie (2008*), who also added a principles component, involving awareness of the use and impact of language assessments. An even more comprehensive LAL framework was developed by Fulcher (2012*), who amalgamated knowledge and skills into practice and added the notion of context, which places practice and principles within a contextual framework, including, for example, historical and social factors.
Subsequent discussions picked up from Stiggins (Reference Stiggins1991) and Taylor (2009*) the notion that various stakeholders might need different levels of LAL (e.g., Jeong, Reference Jeong2013; Malone, 2013*). Against this background, suggestions were put forward that literacy should be described as a continuum of proficiency (Pill & Harding, 2013*). Combining these different perspectives, Taylor (2013*) hypothesized that LAL may be regarded as a multidimensional and differential construct, in which stakeholders will need different levels of competence regarding the different dimensions. Other scholars took up the idea of a developmental (Yan & Fan, 2020*) and multidimensional model with competence levels for various stakeholders in LAL and diversified it, giving it a sounder empirical basis – for example, recent work by Baker & Riches (2018*), Bøhn & Tsagari (2021*) and Kremmel & Harding (2020*).
Other LAL conceptualizations also exist. Baker (Reference Baker2016), for example, views LAL as consisting of propositional, procedural and collaborative knowledge, whereas Villa Larenas (Reference Villa Larenas2020) sees it as comprising disciplinary knowledge (the ‘what’), knowledge of language assessment (the ‘how’), and knowledge of assessment in a broader social paradigm (the ‘why’). More recently, the concept of LAL has been further diversified and specialized – for example, critical LAL (Tajeddin et al., 2022*) or LAL for classroom-based language assessment (CBLA) (Giraldo, Reference Giraldo2018; Lan & Fan, 2019*) or second language writing (Crusan et al., Reference Crusan, Plakans and Gebril2016).
The primary focus of LAL research has been on in-service teachers (Inbar-Lourie, Reference Inbar-Lourie, Shohamy, May and Or2017; Kim et al., Reference Kim, Chapman, Kondo and Wilmes2020), but other stakeholder groups have come to the center of attention, e.g. pre-service teachers (Hildén & Fröjdendahl, Reference Hildén and Fröjdendahl2018; Ho & Yan, Reference Ho and Yan2021), learners (Butler et al, 2021*; Lee & Butler, 2021*; Vogt et al., 2020*, Watanabe, Reference Watanabe2011), language testers (Jeong, Reference Jeong2013), university admission officers (Baker, Reference Baker2016; Deygers & Malone, 2019*; O'Loughlin, Reference O'Loughlin2013) and test developers (Malone, 2013*).
Empirical insights on LAL regarding aspects such as the training needs of teachers, LAL levels and professional development initiatives have now come from many different contexts, for example: Iran (Firoozi et al., Reference Firoozi, Razavipour and Ahmadi2019), Tunisia (Hidri, Reference Hidri2016), Bangladesh (Sultana, Reference Sultana2019), Mexico (Bustamante, Reference Bustamante2022), Turkey (Mede & Atay, Reference Mede and Atay2017), Ukraine (Kvasova & Kavytska, Reference Kvasova and Kavytska2014; Ukrayinska, Reference Ukrayinska and Hidri2018), South Africa (Weideman, Reference Weideman2019), Pakistan (Shahzadi & Ducasse, Reference Shahzadi and Ducasse2022), Nigeria, (Ugwu & Ezeokoli, Reference Ugwu and Ezeokoli2022), Colombia (Giraldo & Murcia, Reference Giraldo and Murcia2018*; Janssen, Reference Janssen2022), Taiwan (Wu, Reference Wu2014), Singapore (Koh et al., Reference Koh, Burke, Luke, Gong and Tan2018), or China (Cui et al., Reference Cui, Liu, Yu and Gao2022; Gu, Reference Gu2014; Koh et al., Reference Koh, Burke, Luke, Gong and Tan2018; Xie & Tan, Reference Xie and Tan2019). The growing body of research from various educational contexts can be seen as a sign of the globalization of LAL as a vibrant research field. In addition, the recent increase in reviews, some of them systematic or scoping reviews, is an indication that LAL has become an established area of research within language testing and assessment (Coombe & Davidson, Reference Coombe, Davidson, Mohebbi and Coombe2021; Coombe et al., Reference Coombe, Vafadar and Mohebbi2020; Fanrong & Bin, Reference Fanrong and Bin2022; Gan & Lam, Reference Gan and Lam2022; Wang et al., Reference Wang, Zuo, Liu and Sun2023).
As touched upon above, the way LAL is theorized in the field is an ongoing process with conceptualizations constantly being expanded and with new dimensions added. To date, there is no conclusive definition of the term LAL, but many scholars have provided much-cited working definitions – for example: Fulcher (2012*), Inbar-Lourie (Reference Inbar-Lourie2013) and O'Loughlin (Reference O'Loughlin2013). With the powerful impact of contextual factors (Tsagari & Vogt, Reference Tsagari and Vogt2022), a static and uniform conceptualization of LAL might not do justice to this complex construct. The way forward might be to continue developing context-sensitive, pluralistic and differential heuristics, appropriately accommodating the needs of various stakeholders and situations.
Regarding future directions for LAL research, another issue is whether the term is appropriate any longer, given its potentially negative connotation as the bare minimum of competence. Alternative terms such as ‘language assessment competence’ have been suggested but not conclusively discussed in the field. Operationalized models of LAL have only rarely been tested empirically so far, and inventories have often been based on assumptions of LAL heuristics. In trying to solve this problem, a dilemma emerges. How can one create a valid, generic model which also takes into account contextual LAL characteristics? Attempts to resolve this dilemma have been undertaken by Fulcher (2020*), for example, whose Apprenticeship Model is based on an operationalization of Fulcher (2012*), but more work is needed. Conceptualizations of LAL need to be empirically validated, which is not only important to establish an empirical basis but also to have LAL professional initiatives grounded in theoretical frameworks of LAL as another important area to be investigated (e.g., Giraldo, 2021*).
The technological dimension of LAL has attracted little attention in the literature so far. The construct has to keep pace with technological progress, also in view of the lessons learnt from emergency remote language assessment (ERLA) in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and in preparation for future educational crises (Maaoui et al., Reference Maaoui, Tsagari and Dammak2023).
So far, LAL has often been discussed from the points of view of language testers and language teachers. Learners as stakeholders have only recently attracted more scholarly attention (e.g., Lee & Butler, 2020*). There is a need to differentiate within this large group – for example, by investigating learners with diverse learning needs, including theoretical deliberations of equality, diversity and inclusion in LAL conceptualizations. Likewise, LAL involving other languages than English, including less commonly taught languages, needs to be addressed. Work on teacher LAL of Russian as a Foreign Language (Drackert & Stadler, Reference Drackert and Stadler2017) and Romance languages (Drackert et al., Reference Drackert, Konzett-Firth, Stadler, Visser and Tsagari2020) has provided some evidence, but the evidence base needs to be broadened. In addition, a sociocultural perspective in which LAL is co-constructed is increasingly discussed in theoretical and empirical work (e.g., Giraldo, Reference Giraldo2020; Holzknecht et al., Reference Holzknecht, Kremmel, Konzett-Firth, Eberharter, Spöttl, Xerri and Vella Briffa2018; Vogt & Tsagari, Reference Vogt and Tsagari2022) and directs the attention towards a more fluid, situated and co-constructed praxis of LAL (Poehner & Inbar-Lourie, Reference Poehner, Inbar-Lourie, Poehner and Inbar-Lourie2020).
Particularly in recent years, research activity in LAL has been remarkable. Hence, a large number of publications have been sifted out. The papers and books included here are based on the extent to which they have advanced the field by giving theoretical direction and/or contributed considerably to our understanding of LAL. More specifically, we have used a combination of citation metrics per publication per year and expert review to identify seminal publications. However, such metrics do not automatically identify the impact of scholarly works, as they do not control for self-citation, bi-directional mutual citations, the use of citations for non-scientific reasons, and so forth (see e.g., Herrmannova et al., Reference Herrmannova, Patton, Knoth and Stahl2018; Swacha, Reference Swacha2022). We also applied our expert knowledge (Taylor, Reference Taylor2011) to evaluate the reverberation that the publications have had in the LAL area in terms of conceptualizations of LAL, impact of empirical research on LAL and implications for teaching and learning. The papers of the timeline are therefore organized according to three major categories:
1. Conceptualizations of LAL.
2. Empirical research in LAL.
3. Pedagogical implications: Materials on or suggestions for how LAL can be developed and enhanced within a local or international teaching and learning context.
Note that these categories are not mutually exclusive, as one and the same publication may have given important contributions theoretically, empirically and practically. However, for each publication in the timeline below we single out the category or categories that we deem it to have had the strongest impact on.
Karin Vogt is a Full Professor of Teaching English as a Foreign Language at the University of Education Heidelberg, Germany. Her research interests include language testing and assessment, inclusive foreign language teaching, intercultural learning, digital technology and AI in foreign language education, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and vocationally-oriented language learning. She has widely published in these areas and has been involved in various research projects – for example, TALE. She is a member of the Advisory Editorial Board of Language Assessment Quarterly. She is also a convenor of research groups such as the Multilingual language assessment SIG (European Association of Language Testing and Assessment) and is the leader of the doctoral colloquium for language teachers at the University of Education, Heidelberg.
Henrik Bøhn, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at the Department of Languages and Literature Studies at the University of South-Eastern Norway, where he teaches English didactics to pre-service and in-service English teachers. His research interests include language assessment, language assessment literacy, intercultural learning, metacognition, learner agency and feedback. He has co-authored and co-edited books and journals on intercultural competence, English language teaching and language assessment.
Dina Tsagari, Ph.D., is Professor at the Department of Primary and Secondary Teacher Education, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway. She has also worked for the University of Cyprus, Greek Open University and Polytechnic University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include language testing and assessment, materials design and evaluation, differentiated instruction, multilingualism, distance education, learning difficulties and inclusive education. She is the editor and author of numerous books, journal papers, book chapters, and project reports. She coordinates research groups – for example: CBLA SIG – EALTA, EnA OsloMet, and is involved in EU-funded and other research projects (e.g. TEFF, TREL, KIDS4ALL, SCALED, NORHED, KriT, DINGLE, TRIBES, ENRICH, TALE, DysTEFL, among others).
