Abstract
As cultural products, assessment systems and instruments are a reflection of the cultures in which they originate and reproduce the characteristics of those cultures. Accordingly, cultural responsiveness in large-scale assessment concerns the entire process of assessment, not simply its tests or the analysis of test scores. This paper focuses on validity as argumentation in the testing of culturally diverse populations in both national and international large-scale assessment programs. It examines the intersection of m procedural assumptions (conceptual and methodological criteria that need to be met in order to validly, fair test culturally diverse populations) and n components of the process of assessment. The paper explains the development and use of the matrix of evidence for validity argumentation. In this matrix, a cell [i, j] contains confirming and disconfirming evidence that Procedural Assumption i is met by the practices enacted and the artifacts used or generated in Assessment Process Component j. An argument of validity is constructed by integrating the information contained in the cells of the matrix. A series of examples illustrate how each procedural assumption intersects with each assessment process component in the matrix. These examples show the ubiquity of cultural issues in assessment. Attaining cultural responsiveness in large-scale national and international assessment programs entails a serious systemic, societal, global effort.
Highlights
Every human invention is a cultural product that originated and evolved as a result of certain needs in a society and which reflects the history, thinking, experience, values, and forms of doing things of those who created it.Underlying the notion of standardization in tests is the implicit assumption that all individuals being tested with the same instrument share the same set of cultural experiences and are familiar with the features of items (Solano-Flores, 2011)
When students from different cultural backgrounds are assessed with the same instrument, fairness the validity of the interpretations of test scores becomes an issue because they may not share the same set of cultural experiences and, may not have equal access to the content of items
This paper addresses the need for conceptualizing and operationalizing cultural responsiveness in large-scale assessment from the perspective of validity
Summary
Every human invention (e.g., a hamburger, a cell phone, a law, or a science curriculum) is a cultural product that originated and evolved as a result of certain needs in a society (e.g., eating, communicating, controlling, teaching) and which reflects the history, thinking, experience, values, and forms of doing things of those who created it. When students from different cultural backgrounds are assessed with the same instrument, fairness the validity of the interpretations of test scores becomes an issue because they may not share the same set of cultural experiences and, may not have equal access to the content of items (see Camilli, 2006). At the core of these efforts is the need for ensuring the equivalence of constructs in ways that the scores produced have similar meanings across cultural groups (van de Vijver and Tanzer, 2004; International Test Commission, 2018) While such efforts are necessary, they may be insufficient to ensure valid, fair testing of culturally diverse populations due to their focus on isolated aspects of assessment. The terms, cultural diversity and culturally diverse population are used in cases in which student populations contain several cultural groups
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