Human Diversity, Assessment in Education and the Achievement of Excellence and Equity

Weaving a Colorful Cloth: Centering Education on Humans’ Emergent Developmental Potentials

“…Lee et al, 2023). This autobiographical organization of knowledge means that the context in which a person is working and their developmental experiences within similar contexts are of critical importance even though these cannot be adequately captured by performance on traditionally constructed tests (Boykin, 2014; Gordon, 1995).…”

“…We sort individual learners based on their performance on contrived measures of achievement along linear trajectories, using differential scores as a rationale to provide differential opportunities too often aligned with race, socioeconomic class, gender, disability status, language proficiency, or other essentialized categories (Gordon, 1995). When students perform below desired levels, rather than examining the holistic context in which these youth are working (Boykin, 2014; Knecht et al, 2016), we apply “interventions” to change the student’s performance. Of course, some approaches and practices do work better than others in and across contexts; these should be adapted to the current context and adopted—utilized in ways that enable ownership and agency among the learners and teachers and that honor dynamic, personalized, acculturated trajectories of growth.…”

Weaving a colorful cloth: Centering education on humans’ emergent developmental potentials

“…Lee et al, 2023). This autobiographical organization of knowledge means that the context in which a person is working, and their developmental experiences within similar contexts, are of critical importance, despite that these cannot be adequately captured by performance on traditionally constructed tests (Boykin, 2014;Gordon, 1995).…”

“…We sort individual learners based on their performance on contrived measures of achievement along linear trajectories, using differential scores as a rationale to provide differential opportunities too often aligned with race, socio-economic class, gender, ability status, language proficiency, or other essentialized categories (Gordon, 1995). When students perform below desired levels, rather than examining the holistic context in which these youth are working (Boykin, 2014;Knecht et al, 2016), we apply "interventions" to change the student's performance. Of course, some approaches and practices do work better than others in and across contexts; these should be adapted to the current context and adopted-utilized in ways that enable ownership and agency amongst the learners and teachers, and that honor dynamic, personalized, acculturated trajectories of growth.…”

Can digital badges strengthen religious ethnic-cultural identity in a religious education setting?

“…Ignored is the possibility that these types of assessments could benefit students if ethnic identity was incorporated rather than addressed. Boykin (2014) notes that there is advantage in incorporating ethnicity and culture in assessment in that it adheres to a human capital view where educators should build on and strengthen people's identity within their ethnicity, providing formative assessment within their cultural identity. The Gordon Commission (2013), in their technical report outlining the potential for twenty-first-century assessment, calls on educators to further address how cultural identity can be given a considerably greater priority in inquiries concerning assessment in education.…”