Centering Situative Transfer for Culturally Sustaining Classroom Assessment

• In Event: Principles for Educational Testing, Data Inquiry, and Classroom Assessment to Support Culturally Sustaining Ecosystems

Abstract

This paper and presentation build on a forthcoming handbook chapter and classroom research that use situative perspectives on transfer to explore culturally sustaining classroom formative and summative assessment. The chapter first explores the cultural responsiveness of four “dimensions” of assessment (format, level, function, and theory) and of cognitive theories of transfer. The chapter then explores a new model of classroom assessment that starts with situative theories of engagement (productive disciplinary engagement, or PDE, in Engle & Conant, 2002) and transfer (expansive framing in Engle et al., 2012). These theories emphasize the experience that students might “transfer in” to support learning and position students as authors who are accountable to the discipline. The chapter then considers a recent critique of PDE and (by extension) expansive framing by Agarwal and Sengupta-Irving (2019). Like other proponents of PDE and expansive framing (e.g., Eodice, et al., 2019, McCoy, 2020; Thompson 2014), Agarwal and Sengupta-Irving acknowledge that helping students transfer in personal experience and positioning students as accountable authors is more culturally responsive than traditional curricula. But they argue that more is needed because challenging dominant ways of knowing can lead to racialized controversies and because social authority can overwhelm intellectual authority. In response, they introduce Connective and Productive Disciplinary Engagement (CPDE) that incorporates epistemic diversity and historicity & identity.

The presentation will first summarize how CPDE extends the five “explanations” of expansive framing in Engle et al. (2020) in the context of classroom assessment. These extensions decenter dominant racist, and colonial ways of knowing and broadens the forms of knowledge represented in classroom assessment. The presentation will then introduce five new CPDE assessment design principles:

1. Support broad transfer in. Informally assess the unique experiences and cultural and linguistic competencies that each student transfers into school context and provide feedback that encourages diverse funds of knowledge and identity.
2. Use sociopolitical controversies. Include sociopolitical controversies in formative and summative assessments that invite minoritized students to position themselves as uniquely experienced.
3. Reposition minoritized learners. Informal and formal feedback should reinforce inclusive positioning and reposition minoritized perspectives and learners.
4. Curb undue social authority. Pay explicit attention to power and privilege in assessment and don’t allow them to center culturally dominant experiences and ways of knowing.
5. Ensure equitable accountability. Hold all students accountable for the diversity of ways of knowing in summative assessments.

This presentation will then explore how the implementation of these principles would be supported by institutional and organizational factors associated with educational testing and data inquiry. The presentation will briefly summarize initial evidence from iterative refinements using some of these principles in graduate-level education courses. This work is significant because it reveals how transformed classroom assessment might connect culturally responsive instruction to data inquiry and external accountability. Arguably, such synergy is needed in order to transcend culturally responsive classroom assessments to make them culturally sustaining.

Author

• Daniel T. Hickey, Indiana University