Aiding Culturally Responsive Assessment in Schools Erasmus Project

Project Title

Aiding Culturally Responsive Assessment in Schools

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Migrants’ issues; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Aiding Culturally Responsive Assessment in Schools (ACRAS) is a three-year pan-European project (2016-2019)
which focused on developing culturally responsive assessment at school. Defined as ‘assessment that utilises
strategies to acknowledge and respect learners’ cultural backgrounds and approaches to learning as they strive for
academic success”, this project has yielded results indicating that framework to ensure culturally responsive
assessment is feasible.
The project consortium consists of researchers from four different institutions (Johannes Kepler University in Austria,
Dublin City University in Ireland, University of Oslo in Norway and Cankiri Karatekin University in Turkey) whose
countries have complementary, albeit different migrant background populations. This combination of strong traditions
of emigration combined with the current increased migrations rates experienced by countries across Europe adds
strength to this consortium’s ability to develop culturally responsive assessment for schools that are suitable for
Europe.
ACRAS activities were divided into the following 8 domain areas with the objective of increasing understanding of
national contexts so as to improve school assessments. These domains were:
1. Assessment
2. Information
3. Framework
4. Case Studies
5. Surveys
6. Toolkit
7. Evaluation
8. Final Report

The research undertaken during this project yielded many outputs, each of which have had positive impact in
disseminating the results of the ACRAS project. These include: the multiple academic papers, which were presented
as numerous invited conference presentations, globally; the website, available in English, German, Turkish and
Norwegian, for continuous information about the project; School Surveys which ensured that schools were placed at
the heart of all research activities; Conceptual Framework, which provides guidance for future researchers to build on
the activities of ACRAS; Case-Studies, which demonstrates the principles of the conceptual framework as well as the
toolkit and pilot study which have been integrated into initial teacher education and CPD programmes to ensure the
long-term sustainability of the project’s activities. Translation of outputs has been at the heart of this project to
maximize the dissemination of the project’s outputs.

In terms of longer-term benefits, the toolkit will be utilised within a Module on designing culturally responsive
assessment for Initial Teacher Education and CPD courses within the primary partner organisation. In addition the
website will remain live with the toolkit available in each language for anyone to use. By publishing a series of peer
reviewed articles in academic journals will make the findings from ACRAS available for future researchers to
reference, critique and elaborate on as they see fit within other cultural contexts. The videos created for the project are
available on Youtube and the publication of outputs on researchgate will also prove as a useful long term resource and
also as a catalyst for further discussion and educational change within other European contexts beyond the end of the
EU funding.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 271280,05 Eur

Project Coordinator

DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY & Country: IE

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITAT LINZ
• CANKIRI KARATEKIN UNIVERSITY
• UNIVERSITETET I OSLO