The Cultural Preparedness Approach to Assessment

Contributing Author: Gideon Arulmani.

More often than not, the methods used to elicit and interpret information are shaped by the philosophical and theoretical orientations of the observer. The rationale underlying methods of assessment and measurement have been the subject of extensive debate and the field has differentiated into the quantitative (psychometric) and the qualitative (non-psychometric) positions. However, an often ignored powerful, arbitrating force is culture. It is quite possible that an assessment method easily accepted in one culture may be unfamiliar, considered strange, or perhaps even inappropriate in another culture. The cultural preparedness view is that quantitative and qualitative approaches are both valuable and as with any single system, both have their limitations. Just as a psychometric test is only as good as the cultural relevance of its items and norms, a qualitative interview is almost entirely dependent on the skill and cultural experience of the interviewer. Difficulties arise when commitment to a method or a theory is placed at higher priority than addressing the child’s needs from the viewpoint of his or her cultural preparedness. Viewed within the cultural preparedness frame, neither the qualitative nor the quantitative methods applied exclusively are sufficient to provide information that is holistic, valid and reliable.

To examine this aspect of cultural preparedness, I share excerpts from my diary written at the beginning of my career nearly 2 decades ago of an experience that had a profoundly formative influence on my approach to understanding human behavior.

“They are all below average…”
Excerpt from personal diary (Arulmani, February, 1993)

Some years ago, very soon after I completed a high-level degree in Clinical Psychology, I was invited to assess the children of tribal families, in the villages surrounding Sandur, a mining town in South India.

The purpose of the assignment was to use psychological tests to identify children’s potentials based on which they could be given scholarships for further education. The invitation was from the 86-year-old head of the erstwhile royal family of the region who were owners of vast iron ore mines in the area. The fathers and mothers of these children were unskilled labourers in these mines and the mine owner’s desire was to support the further education of the children so that their talents and potentials could be fruitfully realised. Brimming over with my newfound knowledge about psychological testing I set off with my tests of intelligence, aptitude, interest and temperament. 

The tests were all administered in a “standardised” manner and the test instructions were meticulously followed. However, even during the administration of the tests, I noticed that almost all my young test-takers were “underperforming”. Most of them could not use the various blocks and cards in my testing kit, their drawings were not “age appropriate”, in fact they could not even correctly hold the pencils that I supplied. 

The tests were scored. As anticipated almost the entire group recorded a “below average” performance. I wrote up the various psychometric reports and handed them over.

A few days later I was asked to meet the person who had commissioned the project. “From your reports it seems none of my children are worthy of a scholarship”, he said to me. “Perhaps you are correct because you have taken a highly scientific approach. But before we come to this conclusion, could you visit these children in their homes and then tell me what your impressions are?” I didn’t understand why that was necessary, since after all I had taken a “highly scientific approach”.

Anyway, I set off for the remote hamlets that were home to these children.

As I approached, I began to see, scribbled on the rocks, examples of the most attractive child art – cavorting animals, soaring birds, twirling plants, dancing humans – executed in sophisticated (yet entirely age-appropriate!) detail. 

The children and their families were thrilled to see me and I was treated as an honoured guest. Still amazed by the drawings and knowing that these families were too poor to afford paints and crayons, I asked who had made the drawings and with what. Three of the “artists” in the group shyly came up and showed me their drawing tools – lumps of iron ore which was ubiquitous in this mining region! These were the very ones who “underperformed” on my paper-pencil tests! 

Further, all around me I noticed an almost seamless involvement of children in what would be considered adult duties in urban environments: keeping the yard clean, caring for the livestock as well as their younger siblings, stoking the fire were all activities that the children were quite naturally involved in. 

I was introduced to one of their “board” games, the board being the mud floor and the cards being old matchbox covers, the complexity of which required the intellectual prowess of a chess master! 

I could go on with my description of what I saw in that little hamlet. But gradually the wisdom of these children’s 86-year-old benefactor dawned on me:

….my methods had “underperformed” and not these bright-eyed children.  

Culture refers to human phenomena that are not linked to genetic or biological inheritance, but to that repository of consistent and assimilated systems of learned behaviour patterns which characterise the members of a specific social group, by which that group achieves the distinction of being different from other groups (e.g., Durkheim, 1893/1984; Hoebel, 1966). The case study reported above shows how the assessor imposed an assessment framework for which the children in the study were not culturally prepared. The example also reveals various other contextually grounded observation points: the kinds of domestic chores the children were naturally involved in, their games, the manner in which they engaged with each other, all would have yielded rich qualitative information had the assessor been sensitive to their cultural preparedness. Much of this information could not have been recorded by the standardised, quantitative approach that was taken. At the same time, the brief given to the assessor was to identify and articulate the potential profiles of each of these children, individually. Using a qualitative approach to achieve this project objective would have been difficult given the limitations of time and resource. Viewed from the cultural preparedness perspective, neither the qualitative nor the quantitative methods were individually sufficient to achieve the assessment target.

It must also be acknowledged that the assessor was culturally prepared for a different approach to assessment, where the assessor’s culture is the academic and training environment in which he had been immersed. The cultural preparedness perspective would ask that both cultural backgrounds are valued and an attempt be made to meet the project’s requirements as holistically as possible, always ensuring that the resulting change contributes in a consonant manner to the group’s cultural preparation status equilibrium.

Compiled from:

Arulmani, G. (2014). The cultural preparation process model and career development. In G. Arulmani, A. J. Bakshi, F. T. L. Leong & A. G. Watts (Eds.), Handbook of career development: International perspectives (pp. 81-104). New York, USA: Springer International.

Arulmani, G., Kumar, S., Shrestha, S., Viray, M., Aravind, S. (2020). The Cultural Preparedness Perspective of Career Development. In P.J. Robertson, T.Hooley & P.McCash (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Career Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

References

Durkheim, E. (1893/1984). The division of labor in society. London: UK: MacMillan (Original work published 1893).

Hoebel, E. A. (1966). Anthropology: The study of man. New York, USA: McGraw-Hill.