Decolonizing Educational Assessment Models

A framework for contextualizing social‐ecological biases in contributory science data

“…We offer a non-exhaustive list of recommendations that institutions-including departments and universities-can undertake to commit to a more inclusive field: (1) universities can provide classes on community engagement and encouraging translational research (Zourou & Tseliou, 2020) 6) restructure tenure and promotion evaluations such that higher value is placed on non-traditional markers of academic success like collaborating with community members, conducting outreach and mentoring (Boyer, 1997;Esposito et al, 2022;Swope et al, 2022) and ( 7) actively move towards decolonizing academia (Eizadirad, 2019;Rodríguez, 2018;Tuck & Wayne Yang, 2021), which will involve greatly restructuring what academic institutions value and shifting the goals of research.…”

“…We offer a non‐exhaustive list of recommendations that institutions—including departments and universities—can undertake to commit to a more inclusive field: (1) universities can provide classes on community engagement and encouraging translational research (Zourou & Tseliou, 2020); (2) institutions providing funding should expand what is considered fundable research questions to better align with priorities and interests in non‐dominant cultures; (3) incentivize and provide opportunities for students, staff, and faculty to engage with contributory data and communities through grants (Estien et al., 2022); (4) create and fund faculty and staff positions that involve communities and contributory research; (5) offer more financial support, especially for graduate students and early‐career professional scientists, to encourage translational research and open access publication; (6) restructure tenure and promotion evaluations such that higher value is placed on non‐traditional markers of academic success like collaborating with community members, conducting outreach and mentoring (Boyer, 1997; Esposito et al., 2022; Swope et al., 2022) and (7) actively move towards decolonizing academia (Eizadirad, 2019; Rodríguez, 2018; Tuck & Wayne Yang, 2021), which will involve greatly restructuring what academic institutions value and shifting the goals of research. We emphasize that these recommendations are not an easy checklist and highlight that in order to move forward, institutions must change.…”

A new bloom – adding ‘collaborate’ to Bloom’s taxonomy

“…Concern has been expressed (Eizadirad, 2019) that traditional assessment methods emphasise competition at the expense of collaboration, so formative and summative assessment should include grading for collaboration through pair or group projects, while respecting and rewarding individual contributions, and/or the demonstration of the use of collaborative tools. The terms usedshare, cooperate, reciprocate, achieve consensusmight help inform such activities.…”

Learning from Unexpected Core Competency Results: A Journey toward Equitable Assessment at the University of the Pacific

“…Equity‐minded assessment refers to a set of practices that collectively serve to understand, prioritize, and optimize the learning experiences and outcomes of student learners, particularly students from communities who have been historically marginalized or underserved in higher education. The scholarship on equity‐minded assessment (Montenegro and Jankowski 2020) and similar frameworks, including culturally responsive assessment (Montenegro and Jankowski 2017; Singer‐Freeman, Hobbs, and Robinson 2019), socially just assessment (Dorimé‐Williams 2018; Henning and Lundquist 2018), and decolonizing assessment (Eizadirad 2019), note several measures that indicate equitable assessment practices: communicate transparently, involve students throughout the process, plan for diversity and difference, and interrogate differences in outcomes. In this article, we focus on describing how our work has engaged with two measures of equitable assessment—transparency and interrogating differences in outcomes—and our intended next steps for incorporating students and planning for diversity and difference.…”