Centering Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Assessment in STEM Subjects

• In Event: Classroom-Based STEM Assessment: Current Status and Future Directions

Abstract

We may conceive of assessments as objective and neutral, but they are not. Assessment has historically functioned to sort and limit access to opportunity (e.g., Au, 2007). How students experience assessment in school, and who succeeds, is influenced by how we think of the construct being assessed, and how systems privilege canonical/dominant ways of knowing and being (Randall, 2021). These larger realities influence what is possible and relevant to how we think about assessment in STEM subjects (Nasir et al., 2020).
It’s been 10 years since the National Research Council published A Framework for K-12 Science Education (2012) and Developing Assessments for the Next Generation Science Standards (NRC, 2014). These reports emphasized that assessment should be three-dimensional and multicomponent, and built around students’ interests and experiences. This vision of assessment is also intended to broaden access and opportunity to learn for students historically held at the margins of science learning, including students in poverty, students of color, and multilingual learners.
In this presentation, we step back to appraise the field’s progress toward the Framework vision and, in particular, our progress toward constructing and enacting formative, summative, and statewide assessments that center equity and justice in assessment in STEM subjects. First, building on existing approaches (e.g., Paris, 2012; Randall, Poe & Slomp, 2021), we propose a conceptual framework for classroom-based assessment that challenges and destabilizes “settled” expectations and criteria for what is assessed with diverse student groups (Bang, Warren, Rosebery & Medin, 2013; Penuel et al., 2019; Randall, 2021; Shepard, 2021). Second, we use this framework to examine how justice and equity are taken up in studies of assessment in the NSF portfolio. Finally, we use the framework to propose future directions for research and development that seeks to transform classroom-based assessment for equity and justice in STEM subjects.

Authors

• Erin Marie Furtak, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Presenting Author

• Okhee Lee, New York University
  Presenting Author