34.011 - Assessment, Truth(s), and Reconciliation

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

Assessment tools used in our field define how we conceptualize “good” schools and “smart” students, we too often accept that the information and ways of knowing codified within these standardized measures represent the most valued knowledge for students to learn and acquire. However, information may be incomplete, culturally and contextually situated, and there may not be a current understanding of how we came to accept these truths as the most valued, valid, and useful. Educational researchers and their work have stood on two sides of this issues - on the one hand, some educational researchers rely upon the data generated from these assessments in their analyses of educational success and failure. Other education researchers have critiqued the current assessment system and its “truthfulness” from multiple standpoints, including psychologists who examine the impact of high-stakes testing on students’ mental health and well-being to anthropologists and critical theorists who question why some ways of knowing are measured while others are not. Rarely, if ever do those researchers come together to conduct a productive dialogue to understand each other’s perspective on evidence building, truth valuation, and how researchers grounded in different disciplines, who examine assessment utilize different processes and ways of reasoning as valid, valuable, and useful. In this session, we aim to organize a dialogue to unpack how truth is established based on “evidence” based entirely on standardized assessments and how educational researchers can problematize those established truths in the current context. They will also consider the harms of the current system of assessment and how to reconcile its impact on students from communities and cultures whose knowledge has not been valued in measures of “good” schools and “smart” students.

Sub Unit

• AERA Presidential Session

Chair

• Jennifer Jellison Holme, The University of Texas at Austin

Participants

• Lorena Llosa, New York University

• Eva L. Baker, University of California - Los Angeles

• Tesha Sengupta-Irving, Vanderbilt University

• Cynthia A. Mccallister, New York University