Creating and enacting culturally responsive assessment for First Nations students in higher education settings

In this article, we argue that current assessment practices in higher education require urgent examination and should be re-imagined in culturally responsive ways to ensure fairness for all. From sociocultural and social justice perspectives, we highlight examples of cultural and linguistic bias in...

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Main Authors: Steele, Carly, Gower, Graeme, Bogachenko, Tetiana
Format: Journal Article
Published: SAGE 2024
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/95527
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author Steele, Carly
Gower, Graeme
Bogachenko, Tetiana
author_facet Steele, Carly
Gower, Graeme
Bogachenko, Tetiana
author_sort Steele, Carly
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description In this article, we argue that current assessment practices in higher education require urgent examination and should be re-imagined in culturally responsive ways to ensure fairness for all. From sociocultural and social justice perspectives, we highlight examples of cultural and linguistic bias in assessment that disadvantages many First Nations students. Incorporating a constructivist viewpoint, we argue that assessment practices must keep pace with culturally responsive pedagogical practices to improve assessment validity for First Nations students and to maintain constructive alignment between learning, teaching, and assessment. Based on qualitative interviews with stakeholders in the On Country Teacher Education program, we describe how university lecturers changed their approaches to assessment and modified their assessment tasks to enact and create culturally responsive assessments. These practices, whilst beneficial for First Nations students, are viewed as being ‘responsive’ rather than ‘proactive’. Recommendations include shifting to a ‘proactive’ stance by evaluating the validity of student learning outcomes and assessment design from the onset.
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institution Curtin University Malaysia
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last_indexed 2025-11-14T11:44:32Z
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-955272024-09-26T04:27:50Z Creating and enacting culturally responsive assessment for First Nations students in higher education settings Steele, Carly Gower, Graeme Bogachenko, Tetiana In this article, we argue that current assessment practices in higher education require urgent examination and should be re-imagined in culturally responsive ways to ensure fairness for all. From sociocultural and social justice perspectives, we highlight examples of cultural and linguistic bias in assessment that disadvantages many First Nations students. Incorporating a constructivist viewpoint, we argue that assessment practices must keep pace with culturally responsive pedagogical practices to improve assessment validity for First Nations students and to maintain constructive alignment between learning, teaching, and assessment. Based on qualitative interviews with stakeholders in the On Country Teacher Education program, we describe how university lecturers changed their approaches to assessment and modified their assessment tasks to enact and create culturally responsive assessments. These practices, whilst beneficial for First Nations students, are viewed as being ‘responsive’ rather than ‘proactive’. Recommendations include shifting to a ‘proactive’ stance by evaluating the validity of student learning outcomes and assessment design from the onset. 2024 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/95527 10.1177/00049441241258496 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ SAGE fulltext
spellingShingle Steele, Carly
Gower, Graeme
Bogachenko, Tetiana
Creating and enacting culturally responsive assessment for First Nations students in higher education settings
title Creating and enacting culturally responsive assessment for First Nations students in higher education settings
title_full Creating and enacting culturally responsive assessment for First Nations students in higher education settings
title_fullStr Creating and enacting culturally responsive assessment for First Nations students in higher education settings
title_full_unstemmed Creating and enacting culturally responsive assessment for First Nations students in higher education settings
title_short Creating and enacting culturally responsive assessment for First Nations students in higher education settings
title_sort creating and enacting culturally responsive assessment for first nations students in higher education settings
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/95527