Assessing Students' Ways of Knowing

This text will give the reader some understanding of the complexities of standardized testing and performance assessment in education – particularly for aboriginal students.

As this collection of articles and essays attest, teachers and leaders in education systems including band schools and leaders within the broader context of society are not adverse to student evaluation and assessment, per se, when viewed as an integral component of student learning and teaching and when the cultural and situated historical and societal experiences of First Nations students are taken into consideration Nor are they adverse to the use of evidence or information collected on an intermittent basis to provide ‘a snapshot in time’ to inform change in policy and practice at the school and system level, and at provincial, territorial and federal government levels.

What these authors do express are misgivings about the intentions and purposes of calls for accountability and about the use of ‘standardized tests’ to collect information to compare students and schools and to evaluate teachers. The book and its contributors invite readers to consider carefully, assessment for accountability, particularly the use of standardized tests, and the value of assessment for student learning. Many alternatives to standardized testing are provided.