One size doesn’t fit all educational assessment in a multicultural and intercultural world

Abstract

ABSTRACT A pronounced development of the 21st century is the technological revolution, which is leading to a global world that creates more multicultural, intercultural, and diverse communities. These developments influence our lives in various ways, one of which relates to education. Educational systems are facing complicated challenges, as they need to align education to the postmodern era while adjusting pedagogical concepts and methods to the multicultural diversity of learners. The article aims to explore these challenges, specifically addressing multicultural educational assessment. We question the prevalent concept of assessment - assessment of learning, vs. assessment for learning or assessment as learning. The former uses assessment as a measurement tool, aiming to benefit decision-making, accountability, control, and supervision, and stems from economic and political considerations. This assessment does not consider the developments of recent decades, which have created a more global, multicultural world where the assumption that ‘one size fits all’ does not work. Furthermore, when this wrong assumption comes to students’ assessment it can have devastating consequences for individuals and groups. We discuss the need to change the educational assessment paradigm, adapt it to a multicultural world, the challenges of doing so, and potential ways to cope with these challenges.