Representing Student Achievements in Science

In what follows, we develop a conceptual argument for expanding current visions of performance assessment lo include the following three ideals: that performance/assessment addresses the value-laden decisions about what and whose science is learned and assessed and include multiple worldviews, lhat performance/assessment in science simultaneously emerges in response to local needs, and that the performance/assessment is a method as well as an ongoing search lor method. To make this argument, we draw together ideas raised by critical, feminist and multicultural science educators to describe an inclusive science education, one we refer to as critical science education, to raise questions about the nature and purpose of performance assessment in science education. We are particularly interested in how the science of assessment is challenged and transformed within a erilical science education perspective and the conditions needed to create an equitable and inclusive practice of science and science assessment across diversity. We present a case study from a youth-led community science project in the inner city to help contextualize our argument.