A Systemic Approach to Culturally Responsive Assessment Practices

In an earlier paper, Slee and Keenan demonstrated that it was possible for tertiary education institutions to design culturally responsive assessment procedures that complied with standardized assessment policy. The authors’ paper described Growing Our Own, an initiative between Charles Darwin University and Northern Territory Catholic Education, which in 2009 began preparing in situ Indigenous teacher assistants for teacher qualification in very remote schools in the Northern Territory, Australia. The paper demonstrated that the university assessment policy accommodated Indigenous learning, reflecting students’ culture, remote learning context, world experience, primary language, family and community values and entry?level competencies. This article is a systemic response to recommendations arising from a recent external evaluation of Growing Our Own and seeks to demonstrate how the project’s approaches meet university assessment rules yet fit within a culturally valid framework.