Introduction and Overview: Assessment in the Context of Culture and Pedagogy: A Collaborative Effort, a Meaningful Goal

Abstract

Over the past few years, we educators and educational researchers have been repeatedly compelled to extend our thinking beyond traditional views of instruction, curriculum, student assessment, and the assessment of teachers. When these essential elements of education are required to seriously integrate the multidimensional variables associated with educating children and adults of color as well as facilitate these learners' academic achievement, the complexity of our work increases exponentially. There is little doubt that the assessment of students and teachers alike will play a pivotal role in determining whether our nation's educational system will meet the academic, social, and economic needs of disenfranchised cultural groups in the 21st century. As the call for the escalation of testing continues at the federal, state, and local levels, it is also necessary for us to increase our diligence in refining existing assessments and exploring the development of new ones. The traditional and emerging forms of assessment tools used to assess students' achievement and teachers' preparedness to teach, as well as the progress teachers make in refining their craft, can no longer afford to ignore the relevance of culture. The discussions and activities surrounding modern performancebased assessments have created yet another opportunity to meaningfully address assessment in the context of culture. The increasing notoriety and perceived potential of these new types of assessments as being more fair than traditional standardized tests makes more scholarly inquiry imperative. Further, we must address the fundamental matter of how these types of assessments can be developed and validated. JNE Editor-in-Chief Sylvia Johnson, in her comments prefacing this issue, has already provided the chronology detailing how the idea for this special issue emerged from a symposium (convened by the guest editor) at the 1997 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. The panelists for that symposium (myself, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Gwyneth Boodoo, Carol Lee, Audrey Qualls, and Renee Smith-Maddox) sought to initiate a preliminary discussion on building bridges between culturally responsive pedagogy and performance-based assessment. The panelists felt that it was necessary for us to think out loud and engage in professional discourse about whether the notion of culturally responsive pedagogy could be manifested in such testing. We all understood the magnitude of the concerns as well as the questions, criticisms, and challenges that awaited us in such an endeavor. Our collective professional experiences, however, had given us considerable insights about culturally responsive pedagogy, educational assessment, and test development and validation. Though we openly admitted that we did not have answers to many of the technical questions and concerns about developing and validating culturally responsive assessments, we strongly believed that one point made sense: If assessment items and performance tasks are grounded in the cultural context of a particular group of color, those examinees may have a better chance of showing competence in certain learning areas. Further, such items and tasks may be able to more accurately identify the deficiencies of examinees of color in these areas. Estrin (1993) and Miller-Jones (1989) provide a valuable grounding for this discussion on assessment in the context of culture. Miller-Jones asserts that the differential test performance of students from culturally diverse backgrounds may largely result more from preferences in or differential access to cognitive modes than to any particular deficiency in the students' academic knowledge or skills. He raises the possibility of addressing this concern by developing items and tasks that are functionally equivalent or congruent with the examinees' cultural points of view. Estrin is more adamant about the importance of culture in assessment, claiming that it is impossible to fully understand a student's performance on any assessment without considering their language and culture. …