ABSTRACT
I view this section’s chapters as a sample of current theoretical work on culturally responsive assessment. Committed to fairness and social justice, all chapters offer different (yet not incompatible) theoretical perspectives on a wide range of issues (e.g., cognition, learning, justice). I examined the chapters’ coverage of six assessment process components (Policy and Legislation, Normative Documents, Test Development, and Adaptation, Testing and Test Administration, Data Analysis, and Uses and Consequences) elsewhere discussed as critical to culturally responsive assessment. I found that each chapter covers only a set of assessment process components—which indicates that current theoretical work has yet to consider important aspects of culturally responsive assessment. I also found that, whereas five of the chapter’s theoretical contributions are descriptive (they organize and make sense of facts and knowledge), only one chapter’s theoretical contribution is prescriptive (it identifies what needs to be done and how). More theoretical work on culturally responsive assessment is needed to guide the thinking and actions of professionals in the field of assessment. I submit that future theoretical work should also examine the indissociability of construct and culture, the relationship between cultural heterogeneity and score variance, and the training of psychometricians on cultural responsiveness.
