Background
This study advances understandings of formative assessment by introducing the Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Formative Assessment (CLSA) framework, grounded in relational and embodied perspectives and culturally sustaining pedagogy. While formative assessment is widely recognized as a process for supporting learning, less is known about how it can be enacted in culturally and linguistically sustaining ways.
Methods
Drawing on a case study of a science and engineering teacher and three multilingual girls from Afro-Brazilian and Portuguese backgrounds in a summer STE(A)M program at a newcomer school in the Northeastern United States, we apply the CLSA framework to analyze moment-to-moment interactions and examine the nature, form, and function of the teacher’s discursive and embodied moves. We analyze how these moves become consequential in sustaining students’ disciplinary engagement through CLSA-aligned practices such as asking questions, providing feedback, and interpreting students’ actions.
Findings
Findings demonstrate how CLSA, when enacted through a proleptic belief in students’ competencies and relational attunement to their translanguaging, embodied interaction, and epistemic flow, surfaces forms of competencies, foundational to STEM disciplines.
Contribution
The study offers insights for how the CLSA approach can serve as a relational and dignity-oriented pedagogical process that recognizes and sustains the brilliance of youth historically marginalized in STEM.
Kayumova, S., Harper, A., Madkins, T. C., & Kahveci, E. N. (2025). Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Formative Assessment in science and engineering: Highlighting multilingual girls’ linguistic, epistemic, and spatial brilliances. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 1–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2025.2529170