Educational Reform Through Designing Culturally Appropriate Assessment Frameworks

Assessments in education enables educators, curriculum designers, and program developers to evaluate the success of their programs. It also allows for assessing learners enrolled in the programs. Assessment frameworks emanate from a Western and positivistic stance and tend to disregard linguistic and cultural diversity from the mainstream European point of view. That said, failing to recognize the distinctions of diverse learners has led to inequitable learning experiences for minority learners, who have distinct ways of knowing, worldviews, and epistemologies, and have led to their high-rates of drop-out and under-performance in academe. Thus, this study reviews the literature on assessment and has found that current assessment frameworks have contributed to the high drop-out rate and academic under-performance among minority learners. This, however, could be resolved when educators indigenize and re-define assessment frameworks and assess their minority learners’ academic performance using culturally appropriate frameworks that incorporate their Indigeneity and ways of knowing.