Assessment to Promote Equity and Epistemic Justice: A Use-Case of a Research-Practice Partnership in Science Education

Abstract

Efforts to align educational assessments with the sociocultural foundations of learning and with instruction are limited because we lack evidence of how such systems can be developed and maintained in inherently complex educational settings. Credible use cases are helpful to developing the evidence base, and we present one here: a research-practice partnership between a university and a large urban school district. The goals of our codesigned system include supporting the redistribution of educational opportunities in science classrooms (equity) and supporting and repairing students’ self-perceptions as agents of knowing and reasoning in science classrooms and in the community (epistemic justice). We describe components of the partnership and educational practices that work together to accomplish these aims: curricula with embedded assessments allowing students to figure out rather than be told core ideas, exit tickets that elicit students’ classroom experience, and an instructional guidance system focused on iterative refinement of teacher learning opportunities to support student agency.