Exploring the efficacy of bilingual assessments in science and technology education: A case of a rural primary school

Given the power that assessments have in today's education systems, the research provided a series of three assessments to explore the role language plays in the learning of bilingual students. As research on science and technology learning has increasingly highlighted the sociocultural nature of how learning occurs, a new wave of frameworks and standards to guide education have emerged worldwide. With the increasing international migration of people comes the need for schools to serve the increasingly linguistically diverse students found in their schools. The study assumed an action research case study approach to generate responses from a purposively sampled cohort of 20 fifth-grade science and technology students in a rural primary school in Gutu, Zimbabwe. Quantitative data collected from three tests written indicate the pivotal role language plays and advocates for bilingual assessment in science and technology classes to cater for student bilingualism.