Culturally Responsive and Related Approaches to Assessment: What are They?

Session Type: Organized Discussion

Abstract

The growing recognition of the need to address longstanding issues of social justice is causing some state education departments to revise content standards and some educational assessment organizations and many members of our field to rethink traditional definitions of equity and fairness. Evolving definitions include in them the need to account for differences in sociocultural backgrounds, funds of knowledge, interests, values, and practices that individuals from diverse cultures bring to learning and assessment.

In keeping with this need, a variety of approaches to assessment have been proposed. Among those approaches are culturally responsive assessment, socioculturally responsive assessment, antiracist assessment, culturally sustaining assessment, justice-oriented assessment, and universal design for assessment. The goal of this session is to facilitate an organized discussion that helps to clarify these concepts. Among the questions the panel will address are how these approaches are similar, how they differ, what students populations are put in focus, how the approaches are being (or might be implemented) in practice, and how one might best communicate about them.

Sub Unit

• Individual Papers, Innovation Demonstrations, Coordinated Sessions, or Organized Discussions

Session Organizer

• Randy Bennett, ETS

Presenters

• Molly Faulkner-Bond, WESTED

• Guillermo Solano-Flores, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

• Aneesha Badrinarayan, Learning Policy Institute

• Leanne Ketterlin Geller, Southern Methodist University