Abstract
Assessment of learning plays a dominant role in formal education in the forms of determining features of curriculum that are emphasized, pedagogic methods that teachers use with their students, and parents’ and employers’ understanding of how well students have performed. A common perception is that fair assessment applies the same mode of assessment and content focus for all students—the approach of assessments in international comparative studies of science achievement. This article examines research evidence demonstrating that the act of assessment is not neutral—different forms of assessment advantage or disadvantage groups of students on the basis of family backgrounds, gender, race, or disability. Assessment that implicitly or explicitly captures the social capital of the child serves to consolidate, not address, educational equity. The article provides an overview of ways that science curriculum focus and assessment can introduce bias in the identification of student achievement. It examines the effect of changes to curriculum and assessment approaches in science, and relationships between assessment of science and the cultural context of the student. Recommendations are provided for science–assessment research to address bias for different groups of students.
Highlights
We explore the issue of cultural or social capital, that is, the experiences that students have in diverse family backgrounds, including race, socio-economic status (SES) and gender
In the heady euphoria of late 1960s Robert Hein, Director of the Elementary Science Studies project in the USA, claimed that science should be the easiest subject to teach in primary school because it only required observation and talking—powers that the great majority of young learners already could bring to school
The abstractness of science content can mean that learning science is less linked to prior social capital than a number of other subjects, its language is to a greater of lesser extent a foreign language, and this makes it susceptible to variation in social capital and to a lack of equity across all students
Summary
At the biennial Symposium of the International Organization for Science and Technology. The underlying philosophy is that all children can learn, and teachers should have expectations that all children can achieve high standards [2] Educational reforms, especially those that rely on social indicators such as NCLB’s student achievement reporting, can have unintended outcomes [3], and considerable criticism has resulted as to the negative effects of NCLB on the learning of all students [4]. A major curriculum reform in science education has been the move to a focus on deeper scientific learning and to modes of assessment that in themselves create different performance expectations, and outcomes, for students. Cultural difference underpins language and linguistic differences, and experiential learning of students These considerations can affect students’ science learning and demonstration of their scientific understanding, according to the identified focus of scientific learning and assessment mode. It may be that what follows provides answers to the embarrassing question posed at IOSTE
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