Examining the Role of Culture in Educational Assessment

Abstract

Educators and psychologists working in the schools continually struggle with the issue of how culture should be taken into account in the psychoeducational assessment of children and youth. When psychoeducational assessments are culturally informed, children are more likely to receive needed services and effective educational interventions. When they are not, these assessments may fail to identify the problem correctly and lead to inappropriate interventions, resulting in children not being educated to their full potential. To maximize our ability to conduct culturally informed assessment, it is appropriate to return to and examine our basic assumptions. In this chapter the author focuses on 2 fundamental questions: (1) Why do we use tests in the first place? and (2) How can be accomplish the purposes of assessment and still be responsive to the cultural background of the test-taker? (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)