Entry Testing and the Overrepresentation of Romani ... - UR Research

R26PITFALLS AND BIAS2008, 136). Ardila (2005) describes ways that testing procedures and conditions might conflict with children’shome communities. For example, tests are administered through a highly regimented script with specific instructionsand formal language which might be difficult for some children who might not have had access to educationalsettings where formal instructions are usually given. For collective cultures, demands for individual responses orrequests to “do your best” might not be as valued as in the dominant culture. In addition, certain tasks that arepart of intelligence tests, such as figure drawing or digit repetition might seem purposeless and unimportant. Someof the items on intelligence tests are timed or depend on a child’s processing “speed.” Time can be considereda social construct, and for some cultural groups, tests that are timed or depend on speed are inappropriate, as itmight take a slow and deliberative process to carefully work through test items and produce quality work.Individuals who administer the tests are usually strangers to those to whom they give the test, which also mightimpact a child’s performance on the test. Moreover, for some children it might be strange for an adult to askquestions to which they (that is, as the adults) should already know the answer. Therefore, it is essential thatassessments consider the language and cultural characteristics of the children being tested both during testadministration and when interpreting the results of the test (Center on the Developing Child 2007, 22).Dynamic testing is a strategy that might be useful to consider when administering intelligence or ability teststo children from minority communities. Whereas standard assessment practices focus on stasis, evaluatingpreexisting, pre-learned skills, dynamic assessment emphasizes measuring the processes involved in learning andchange (Sternberg et al. 2002, 143). In a study of the assessment of intellectual potential in rural Tanzanianschool children, Sternberg and colleagues (2002) sought to determine if short intervention teaching of cognitiveskills and strategies would have any effect on posttest scores, in essence, to assess developing abilities. All childrenwere given a pretest, and then the experimental group of children received short intervention teaching sessionswhile the control group received no such interventions. All children were administered a posttest. The posttestscores of children who received short intervention teaching increased compared with children in the controlgroup. Dynamic testing by its nature contributes to a less neutral relationship between the examiner and examineethan in traditional, static testing situations. The dynamic testing procedure seems to tap into “important abilitiesthat would not have been measured were one only to have considered the pretest (static) scores” (Sternberg etal. 2002, 158). In discussing differences between static (traditional) and dynamic testing, Sternberg and colleaguesnote that the intervention teaching sessions were short, lasting less than an hour. In dynamic testing, childrenare provided feedback until they either solve a problem or give up. In this way, testing “joins with instruction, andthe test-taker’s ability to learn is quantified while he or she learns” (Sternberg et al. 2002, 143). Through thismethod of testing, children are able to show their knowledge through a brief intervention whereby children learnthe nuances of test-taking, something they might not have had exposure to in the past.