Setting the Scene for Equitable Assessment: A Mini Ethnographic Case Study of Assessment Culture in a Theater-Based Artist-in-Residence Program (Poster 16)

• In Event: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

"From classrooms to children’s museums to halau hula (a community-based practice of passing down hula tradition), learning environments have been framed and studied as expansive cultures with their own social organization, customs, goals, and insider perspectives and behaviors. This anthropological perspective on education has given rise to the social and cultural turns in learning theory and research. Now, across educational discourse there is general agreement that learning is connected to its sociocultural context. However, educational assessment— an inseparable part of the learning process and a persistent challenge across learning environments— continues to be treated exclusively as a curriculum design challenge, and is not also understood as a cultural practice within a learning environment.
To support the development of educational assessments that more equitably attend to the cultural diversity of learners today, I sought to study assessments as social and cultural practices. For my dissertation, I conducted a mini ethnographic case study on the culture of assessment in a theatre-based artist-in-residence program for third grade students. The study was guided by the following research question:
● How does assessment occur in the artist-in-residence program?
● What features of the artist-in-residence program are key to supporting this assessment culture?
● How does the culture of assessment invite and honor learners’ cultural and epistemic diversity?
Preliminary findings map out the assessment culture of the program, including who engages in assessment, how, where, and when, and identify pedagogical features that support this culture of assessment, such as practicing an improvisational approach to teaching and learning."

Author

• Kailea Saplan, University of Wisconsin - Madison