The Cultural Validity in Assessment (CVA) project investigates how cultural background influences the ways in which students interpret science and mathematics assessment items and the cognitive activities they use in completing those items.
To carry out our investigation, we administered science and mathematics test items to a sample of students from 10 cultural groups and geographical areas in the United States.
The test items have been used in the past in large-scale testing (specifically, the National Assessment of Educational Progress) and are deemed psychometrically sound.
In addition, we worked individually with a subsample of students for each cultural group and asked them to "think aloud" as they engaged in responding to the items. After completing each item, we asked students to explain how they interpreted it and how they related its content to their personal experience.
We are examininging the mean score differences between cultural groups for each item, the inferred cognitive activity of the students as they take the tests, and the students' socio-cultural activity (participation, context, and system of values, beliefs, and epistemologies).
Based on our analysis of the data, we will determine: (1) whether students from different cultural groups exhibit different patterns by which they understand the science and mathematics exercises; (2) how culture influences the inferred cognitive activity elicited by those exercises; and (3) whether those differences can account for performance score differences among cultural groups.
Our goal is to contribute to equitable testing in science and mathematics by offering a new perspective for addressing cultural diversity in testing. We intend to determine whether procedures for test development and evaluation should pay more attention to culture and whether the notion of cultural validity should be considered in assessment development and testing practices.
The project has created a
website and a newsletter,
Chrysalis, that is available online.
Chrysalis provides teachers and schools with information on the progress of the project, along with information intended to be useful for practitioners of science and mathematics education in multicultural contexts.
Director: Ursula Sexton
Contact: Guillermo Solano-Flores
Tel: 650.381.6412
Email: wsolano@wested.org
This project is part of WestEd's Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics (STEM).
WestEd staff involved with this project:
Resources related to this project:
