It is with great sadness that we report the death of Penny McKay who passed away peacefully at home after a long illness on 22nd August 2009. Penny was a leader in language education in Australia and internationally and her contribution to the field was immense. Her development of the ESL bandscales set an international benchmark for the assessment of additional language learning by children and adults.
Working collaboratively with educators and researchers in schools, Penny pioneered an approach to assessing learners’ development in EAL. She was committed to four fundamental principles. First, assessment frameworks should be tied to empirical, classroom-based observations of English language learners of different ages and backgrounds. Second, those frameworks should respect and respond to classroom teachers’ understandings of and insights into their learners. Third, frameworks must be informed by theory as it continually develops. And finally, they must be designed to support learners’ language development and to inform teachers in their teaching.
Her work is honoured through the recently established Penny McKay Award for Promising Research in School-Based Language Development, Curriculum and Assessment. NALDIC has made a donation to the fund. More information and donations can be made at http://education.arts.unsw.edu.au/recentevents/nationalsymposiumonenglishassessment/pennymckayaward/
