1:30
And it's likely that this increasing diversity is going to be a
feature of classrooms in the near future, and the fact that we've got changes in
our schools, changes in our classrooms, certainly
has implications for assessments, and what we'll
be doing in the rest of the session, is thinking about and talking about,
what sort of perspectives minorities might have on assessment,
and how might they be different from the majority populations.
2:08
When we think about the minorities that are now present in many of our classrooms
we are often encountered with some very, very different groups of people.
I've mentioned before that minorities might have migrated
from within a country, they may have come from somewhere outside of our country,
they may be an indigenous group or they may be
a group that comes from countries that are very much nearby.
For example, in New Zealand we now have a large,
significant population of people from our nearby Pacific countries.
2:57
In many cases, migrants to places like New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere,
have voluntarily decided to shift there.
In other cases, migrants have arrived due to having
to leave their normal country of residence.
In addition to having minority groups based on different cultures,
different languages, sometimes, different religious beliefs,
minorities may also be stigmatized in terms of individual differences based
on things like disability, sexual orientation, or other factors.
3:45
They may speak the language of the majority of
the population - in a place like New Zealand, it's English.
Or they may speak a language or other languages other than English.
They may write those languages that they know or it may be just a spoken language.
They may belong to different religions,
despite speaking the same language and
seemingly having very similar cultural practice.
4:13
Within a particular group their might be a variety of different cultural practices.
Some of our ethnic communities also maybe multi-ethnic, maybe multi-cultural,
they may come from a place where there's a
variety of different cultures and variety of different languages spoken.
Also, ethnic groups may be distinguished
in terms of social class or social hierarchies,
and that may restrict the association of members within that group.
And it's not always often apparent to outsiders how in
fact minority groups actually constituted or how they affect a structure.
5:39
In other cases, we have minority groups,
they want to participate in the majority culture,
they want to learn the majority language -
in a case like New Zealand, that's English -
yet, they still want to retain their own culture,
and in some cases, their own languages within the existing school system.
6:30
In other circumstances, we may have minority groups,
or indigenous groups, that wish to retain their
own languages and their own cultural practices within
the mainstream or the government funded educational system.
For example, for Maori in New Zealand, it is possible
for Maori to be educated in the medium of Maori,
6:58
learn to a curriculum that is only written in the Maori language,
pretty much have Maori teachers that are
very much conversant with Maori community and practices.
And because those students are English speaking, New Zealand is an English
speaking place, there is also a time and a place for use of a language like English.
So, there's a wide variety of perspectives on how minorities
may wish to integrate into a mainstream or a majority culture.
8:15
Or a minority group may wish to have greater control
over assessment practices, right to the extent that minority
group may wish to have assessment tools
in their own language that have been developed by their own teachers,
standardised within their own students and trialed amongst
their own populations.
The development of assessment tools for a particular group assumes that
we have reasonable numbers of those minority students,
and also the expertise in order to undertake those practices.
8:59
For example, an example of one particular minority group
wishing to have greater control over assessment tools and practices is
the group of the indigenous people of New Zealand, the Maori community.
The majority of Maori students are in English medium classrooms,
learning in the medium of English
and that's around about 85% of Maori students.
There is, however, a small percentage of students
that are learning in the medium of Maori.
In New Zealand there is no restriction on who enters Maori medium education.
It's up to parents to choose on which form of education they enroll their students.
You don't have to be of Maori descent or belong
to the Maori ethnic group to enroll in Maori medium education.
And in all Maori medium schools and
classrooms you will find students of non-Maori descent.
But, what the New Zealand government has done
is it has sponsored
the development of assessment tools that are in the medium of Maori, that have been
developed by Maori teachers, Maori curriculum experts, trialed amongst the
Maori student population, national norms created that look at how we
can compare individual students, groups of
students compared to the national Maori norms.
And those tools are greatly used by Maori teachers.
It's important to note that these tools
aren't simply a translation of the English equivalent.
They have been developed, trialled by Maori teachers, and okayed and checked by
Maori teachers as being suitable for Maori
students learning through the medium of Maori.
There are other issues that we need to consider
when it comes to the assessment of minority students.
When we are assessing minority students in mainstream cultures, in the case
of New Zealand, those learning through the medium of English, we need to take into
account issues such as bias, fairness, and
sensitivity when it comes to minority populations.
In the case of New Zealand, we have three major minority groups.
We have the Maori community, which is around about 14% of the total population.
The Pacifica community from islands throughout the Pacific -
in particular Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Niue, the Cook Islands, Rarotonga, and
other countries. And also, we have in recent times a sizeable number of Asian students.
And one of the things the New Zealand government does provide some
assessment tools that provide norms for each of these major ethnic groups.
And also, it provides norms for those whose English isn't a first language.
12:22
Were there appropriate assessment tools and
procedures provided for when we were students?
Did the assessment practices take into account the wishes of our own communities?
For those of us that are currently teaching
minority students, do we have appropriate assessment tools?
Do we have appropriate assessment procedures
that are suitable for our minority students?
And do those procedures meet the wishes of minority students?
Thank you.
[MUSIC]
Dr Peter KeeganSenior Lecturer, Te Puna Wānanga, Faculty of Education
Associate Professor Gavin BrownDirector, Faculty of Education Quantitative Data Analysis and Research Unit
Professor John MacBeathProfessor Emeritus
