Assessing Students at the Margins

Assessing students at the margins can refer to either or both nonmainstream students or nonmainstream settings. The former might be females, students of color, or students from a language background other than English. For science education, nonmainstream settings include contexts such as museums and community-based programs. Regardless of the particular student population or context, fairness in the assessment process is key. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA et al. 1999) describe fairness as encompassing lack of bias, equitable treatment, equality in outcomes, and opportunity to learn. The latter notion is further conceptualized by Pullin and Haertel (2008) to include the content taught and educational resources as well as classroom processes. Attention to these issues is important for all students; it is even more so for nonmainstream students who are often misrepresented or underserved by the assessment process. From an assessment design perspective (Shaw 2005), the use of bias review panels and the approach known as universal test design (Thompson et al. 2002) aim to remove potential barriers and biases, while an assessment is being developed. For example, consider students whose native or primary language is different from that of the test, known as English learners (ELs) in the USA. Eliminating complex language that is irrelevant to the content being assessed can make assessment items more accessible to such students, thus improving the accuracy of the information provided by the assessment. With respect to assessment delivery, accommodations such as longer time and use of bilingual glossaries have been shown to increase fairness for ELs without advantaging them over native English-speaking peers (Abedi et al. 2004). In many cases, the above strategies are coming to be seen as mainstream approaches for assessing students at the margins. They are readily applicable to school-based assessments, be they teacherdeveloped or large-scale external. Yet science learning is not confined to the four walls of a classroom. Assessment in nonmainstream settings offers interesting challenges and opportunities. In such settings comparability may be less of a concern such that standardization has less importance. Grasping what students have learned and are able to do is still worth knowing. Fusco and Barton’s (2001) work with a community-based science program offers insights to assessment in settings at the margins. Their efforts focused on performance assessment, which they saw as “an excellent resource to help create a participatory and inclusive practice of science that draws more closely and critically from the culture and practices of young people” (Fusco and Barton 2001, p. 352). This vision of fairness redefines marginalization through student advocacy, agency, and empowerment. Such “learner relevant assessment” strives to improve learning through critically incorporating student knowledge and background into all phases of the process. Learner relevant assessment calls for an expanded definition of opportunity to learn and its consideration of what is taught as well as how. It draws on the notion of “culturally relevant pedagogy” and its propositions of students’ academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness (Ladson-Billings 1995). Learner relevant assessment connects also to the concept of “cultural validity” (Solana-Flores and Nelson-Barber 2001), the effectiveness with which