Purpose. The purpose of this study was to investigate an instrument, the Cross-cultural Understandings in Multicultural Education (CUME) Assessment, which was devised to measure third grade students' understandings of selected crosscultural/ multicultural concepts. These concepts were derived from a cultural anthropological perspective of human similarities and differences.
Procedures. The study examined the reliability and validity of the CUME Assessment, a multiple-choice, domain referenced test consisting of twenty-one items based on seven instructional objectives. Third grade students, whose teachers indicated on a Teacher Questionnaire having taught these objectives as a part of the formal curriculum, were assessed. Three instruments were administered to this group (N = 100): the CUME Assessment, the Student Interview, and People Pictures, an instrument devised to measure attitudes toward foreign peoples. The CUME Assessment was examined and evaluated by a group of educational experts. Additionally, a quasi-experimental design was used to compare the CUME scores of the treatment group with those of a control group selected on the basis of the Teacher Questionnaire. Data were analyzed using both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics.
Findings. Analysis of the data established adequate reliability for the CUME Assessment. Expert evaluation of the item-objective congruence of the CUME yielded moderate to high mean scores for all subtests. The total scores of the Student Interview and the CUME Assessment were moderately correlated and significant (p
Conclusions. A moderately high degree of content validity of the CUME Assessment was established. The investigation indicated adequate support for the reliability, construct validity and the concurrent validity of the assessment.
Recommendations. The CUME Assessment may be justifiably, but cautiously, utilized by educators to assess third grade students. It is an efficiently administered instrument which evaluates the quality of curriculum and instruction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pacific.edu/oai:scholarlycommons.pacific.edu:uop_etds-4183 |
| Date | 31 December 1984 |
| Creators | Kobus, Doni Kwolek |
| Publisher | Scholarly Commons |
| Source Sets | University of the Pacific |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations |
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