Culturally Sustaining Approaches to Classroom Assessment in the Context of High School Physics and Chemistry

• In Event: Culturally Sustaining Approaches to Classroom Assessment

Abstract

Purpose. This study aims to theoretically explore the meanings of culturally sustaining approaches to classroom assessment, while presenting possible images in the context of high school physics and chemistry.

Framework. Grounded in contemporary theories on learning, equity, justice, and assessments (Author, 2021a; NRC, 2014; NASEM, 2022) and building upon critical pedagogies that center justice and equity (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris & Alim, 2017; Frairie, 1996), I conceptualize three tenets for culturally sustaining approaches to classroom assessments (CSA). First, CSA expands what is counted as knowledge, knowing, learning, or “mastery” of discipline at schools with dual attention to the multiplicity of ways of knowing in both the discipline and its students. Second, CSA supports the thriving of minoritized students at schools by facilitating the use of their cultural, linguistic, and relational assets in doing sciences. Third, CSA promotes minoritized students’ growth, joy, and relations in a humanized learning environment toward a more just and sustainable future. A key distinction of CSA from other assessments for equity is its intentional design and actions to disrupt and challenge existing norms and culture of assessments that reflect neoliberal, White, Eurocentric values (e.g., individualism, meritocracy, hierarchical sorting, binary thinking).

Methods and Data Sources. This conceptual piece explores the possibilities of CSA in the context of an equity-centered participatory design research project (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016). In this project, high school chemistry, physics teachers and researchers co-designed and enacted sets of curriculum and assessment (see the details in Author 2023; 2022). The majority of students in the participating teachers’ classrooms were Latinx, multilingual learners from low-income families. Multiple sources of data were collected, including assessment artifacts generated by the students, classroom observations, interviews with 8 teachers and focus students, and student experience survey.

Findings. In the full paper, the three tenets of CSA are further theorized and unpacked using three cases–high school physics assessment in the unit of momentum and impulse (Author, 2023), chemistry assessment in the unit of stoichiometry and thermodynamics (Author, under review), and in the unit of chemical equilibrium. Specifically, I draw upon the notion of ‘unconventional assessment’ (Author, 2023) to illustrate the processes in which knowledge and ways of knowing in high school physics came to be expanded (tenet #1) while presenting opportunities for minoritized students to build new relationships with others and physics by leveraging their cultural and linguistic assets (tenet #2 & 3). The case of chemistry assessment about equilibrium illustrates the processes in which CSA mediates minoritized students’ participation in civic engagement activities to address climate and environmental injustice (tenet #1,#2, & #3).

Significance of the study. This conceptual piece contributes to the emerging knowledge base in the area of CSA by theoretically articulating the meanings of CSA. This study builds upon and expands contemporary theories of learning, equity, justice, and assessment. In addition, this study provides illustrations of CSA in the context of high school sciences, which will enable educators and researchers to explore the possibilities of CSA in practice.

Authors

• Hosun Kang, University of California - Irvine

• Nelly Tsai, Irvine Unified School District