INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT OF CRITICAL THINKING: FRAMEWORK FOR TRANSLATION AND ADAPTATION

Abstract

Higher education institutions worldwide claim they impact students’ learning outcomes within and across academic domains. Critical thinking (CT) is prominent among the intended outcomes (Braun et al., 2020). In this context, there is increasing interest in ecologically valid performance assessments (PAs) of CT that can be used internationally (Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al., 2018). While several studies have aimed to measure and compare CT skills across countries, this typically has been done using multiple-choice questions. Only a few studies involve adaptation of PAs. Their results point to the need for a more refined adaptation process (Braun et al., 2020), especially in terms of functionally equivalent adaptation and redesign. Based on a review of previous approaches related to test adaptation, with focus on the challenges of achieving cultural responsiveness, we propose a conceptual framework for adapting PAs of CT for international studies. The framework differentiates between two stages and three adaptation designs. The first stage involves a collaborative approach to the design of PAs of CT. The second stage offers three design alternatives which differ in their emphasis on linguistic considerations and cultural responsiveness. While this paper focuses on PAs of CT for higher education, it may be applicable to pre-college education.