Accessing Students' Knowledge in a Context of Linguistic and Socioeconomic Diversity: The case of internal human anatomy

Abstract

Traditional forms of assessment, mainly by written tests and examinations, cannot be said to be fair in a multicultural, multilingual environment. In South African public schools, home language is strongly associated with socioeconomic context, with both factors related to performance in traditional assessments. Children attending poor public schools speak one or more African languages at home, and their performance in national and international assessments is below that of middle-class public schools. The present study investigates students' understanding of their internal anatomy in the ninth year of formal schooling (Grade 9; average age 15) by drawing instead of writing. Twelve teachers collected drawings from 310 Grade 9 students in nine different schools of different socioeconomic and linguistic contexts. Boys were slightly more likely to draw systems and organs than girls, but quality of the drawings did not differ significantly. The most significant finding is that the marked distinction between performance of middle-class schools and those from lower socioeconomic environments in traditional forms of assessment is removed. This has implications for fairer assessment of students' knowledge in a multilingual context.