What Critical Methodologies Can Teach Us About Doing Assessment In and Out of the Classroom

• In Event: Culturally Sustaining Approaches to Classroom Assessment

Abstract

Purpose
While research on culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) has gained momentum in recent years, CSP assessment has lagged behind. Despite the emerging nature of this research area, researchers who ground their work in critical race (CR) theory, which is at the heart of CSP’s theoretical roots, have developed tools to gain insight into the knowledges and experiences of racialized learners (RLs). We argue that these critical race methodologies (CRMs) could help inform CSP assessment. We asked, “How do CRMs reveal what RLs know and can do? And what insights do these methodologies offer for classroom assessment?
Theoretical Framework
Often billed as “unbiased”, assessments can distort, deny, silence, or outright erase the knowledges and experiences of RLs (Author & Colleague, 2020). This study was framed by Latiné CRT (Stefancic, 1998) and employed two CRMs that “provided tool[s] to ‘counter’ deficit [assessment] storytelling” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 23): testimonios and pláticas. Testimonios represent lived communal knowledges while pláticas can be viewed as dialogic conversations that are co-generative of knowledge (Author & Colleague, 2023). Together, these methodologies center the knowledges of those who have been racialized while also creating a new knowledge system that can be co-constructed between those who are emic and etic to different communities.
Methods and Data Sources

This study pulls upon a 3-year CR ethnographic study in a middle school afterschool program in the Southeast of the United States (Author, 2020a); (Author, 2020b);(Author, 2020c).More than 50 students and 27 pre- and in-service teachers worked to co-construct knowledge centered around understanding the writing of grant proposals, establishing of city bus routes, and funding of school programs. This paper will take a second look at the data to examine how testimonios and pláticas used in this program can help conceptualize CSP assessment in school sanctioned spaces. We examine the learning of three youth co-participants through their rap-testimonios (Liz), photo-voice testimonios (Luis), and pláticas (Daniel).

Results

The findings highlight how youth used what many in schooled spaces would consider non-academic languaging and reasoning to express their knowledge of the world. For example, Liz’s rap-testimonio shed light on her understanding of sexism and economic systems. Luis’s photo-testimonio provided a glimpse into his understanding of how policy “priorities” impact the learning of multilingual students. Daniel’s pláticas showed how students could use their entire linguistic repertories to express themselves and build knowledge related to how communities of color have not only survived yet also thrived. Overall, CRMs help envision an approach to CSP assessment in the classroom that is (a) grounded in a range of artifacts, (b) dialogic, and (c) explicitly and unapologetically critical.
Significance
While CSP assessment may be “new,” there is a longstanding tradition among CR researchers of seeking alternative methodologies to understand (in other words, to assess) the knowledges and experiences of RLs. By taking a lesson from these methodologies, classroom assessment can begin to disrupt hegemonic assessment practices and expand what “counts” as legitimate ways of coming to understand what students are capable of.

Authors

• Jason D. Mizell

• Scott Grapin, University of Miami